Project End
by Colorslander
Summary: Assassination Classroom alternate ending. In the end, nothing they did mattered. The faux God of Death killed Kurosensei, Shiro is triumphant, Nagisa is dead, and Kayano runs away. Then, the government offers a deal. After all, billions of yen and training by the world's best isn't a reward, it's an investment.
1. Prologue

_Project End_

Prologue

There's blood all over her.

"Empty your pockets, state your name, address, and you will receive a medical exam shortly," the voice said, filled with more procedure than humanity.

Kayano blinked, who was talking to her? Some nameless grunt, sitting in front of her, checklist on hand and looking incredibly bored? It didn't matter anyway. She warily rubbed her hands on her face, but forgot it was covered in _his_ blood, her cheeks now smeared in red.

"Name," the man repeated, trying to remain unperturbed by this young girl covered in blood. He was well trained.

"Kurosensei is dead," Kayano rambled instead, her head was overworked and stressed trying to process the insanity that occurred not too long ago. Her mind was overstimulated and she couldn't stop herself. "The God of Death killed him. The fake one. We just stood there and watched. He killed Kurosensei. Then he killed… he killed Nagisa."

The man in the JSDF uniform shifted uncomfortably. "Listen kid, do you need emergency help right now?"

No. She didn't want _their_ help. Why was her class still being strung along by the government? Kurosenei was gone, vaporized, not a single piece of him left. Nagisa wilted on ground too frozen to soak up his blood. Why did they bring them here, in some generic, white roomed facility? She wanted to be gone, she wanted to mourn.

"No."

"Then, name."

Kayano wondered which name she should give him. She had a dozen of them. Should she tell the truth? She looked at the poor generic soldier, obviously not okay with dealing with kids. Not caring that her friends needed to be with their families, and she needed to curl up in her bed somewhere and sleep out her exhaustion and rage and brokenness.

"Kayano Kaede," she replied. She didn't want them knowing her real name. They didn't have the _right_. She gave them the false address that she had given the school, if they went to investigate they would know it wasn't a real home, but it wouldn't matter. She paid her rent in advance and in cash, and the neighbors were the kind to never bother asking questions. Let them chase after nothing.

"Okay Kayano-san, remove everything from your pockets, and follow this guard to your room."

"My room?" Kayano shook her head. "What about my friends?" Panic began to well up in her throat, were they being separated?

"They're okay," he said shortly as if it explained everything. "Inside."

Her room was small, something that could barely pass as a janitor's closet, but it was dressed like it might have been once been a hospital room, repurposed just for them; a small examination bed was pushed into a corner, and ar fold up chair to its side, a sink, and a trash for biohazard waste. The guard closed the door behind her and locked it.

She glared. Maybe a repurposed prison.

She sat on the bed, closed her eyes, and tried to recollect her thoughts. A lock on the door meant nothing; it would take any one of them less than a minute. Escape wouldn't be too difficult either, if she was by herself. But if she was going with everyone else, that would be a problem, stealth was destroyed by numbers.

Whatever this facility was, it was a decent drive away from their town, somewhere secluded, probably military. When she looked in from the outside, opaque windows glittered in the rising sun, but she saw none inside the actual building. Fake windows, this place was built for security in mind.

Her musing was interrupted by the door opening, an older man with half mooned spectacles sliding off his nose wandered in. He smiled gently, and it made Kayano's inside squirm, like a dozen worms in her stomach. She needed to get out, this place felt oppressive, like it was weighing down on her chest and squeezing her lungs.

"Don't worry. I'm a doctor," he said without giving his name. He sat in the folding chair, and looked through his glasses like he was dissecting her. "You've got quite a lot of blood on you, but I was informed you didn't have any injuries. You must have been close to the monsters when they were fighting."

"Kurosensei doesn't bleed. This is Nagisa's." She lifted her arms like she was cradling the air. "I was holding him."

"I," the man looked so startled his glasses almost slipped off. "Your classmate was bleeding?"

"He died," she said blandly. "Right in my arms. And your people did nothing."

Concern flared, probably fake and full of poison. She didn't want it. "Do you feel the need for psychological coun-"

"Where's my friends?" she interrupted. The doctor seemed miffed at the interruption but it allowed him to slip back into professional mode. "They're well taken care of; we just have to do a quick examination to make sure you're uninjured and healthy."

"I'm okay," she said. Relatively okay. Better than boys that were ripped apart by a false God of Death, better than boys who had holes torn straight through their chest, where their lungs filled with blood, and bones snapped as the tentacles ripped through flesh and muscle.

Anger coursed through her body.

Who the hell were they? They didn't lift a finger to stop Nagisa's death, they weren't there when everyone watched their friend die and the seconds all melted together in timeless pandemonium. Then they asked for her _name_ , and seized the only people that could understand each other and put them into separate, tiny rooms and wanted to ask them _questions_. Kurosensei is dead, and Nagisa is dead, and to hell with them, every single one of them. "I want to see them," she said with rising hysteria.

"Right now I need to-"

"If you aren't going to let me see them," she spat, "then leave."

"Little lady, I'm afraid there are proper protocols-"

"Protocols?" Heat radiated from her cheeks. "Your protocols didn't save Nagisa, screw your protocols!"

She hadn't felt anything like this since parasitic organisms fed into her inner turmoil, like coaxing the coals of a raging forrest fire, talking to her like the devil on her shoulder saying; _kill him, he took your sister's life_. Only there were no tentacles, there was just her sorrow and this man who completely ignored that _she had Nagisa's blood on her._

"Take me home," she bluffed, because home had nothing left for her but the demand would be enough for him to turn his tail and leave. If they went through the trouble to separate her for her friends, then they wouldn't let her meet with her parents, and they would need to stall to keep her there.

"I," he sighed like she asked him for improbable ransom. "I'll see what I can do."

He left the room, and Kayano breathed. She closed her eyes, she was like a broken lid of a tea kettle, the steam and hatred pouring out. She couldn't calm down, because if she tried, Nagisa's face came to her and all of a sudden the day's events roared back like a tsunami.

She couldn't stop it... but she could control it, she had near a year of experience taking these emotions and sharpening it to edge it like a weapon. She bit her lip and meditated while standing.

 _Kurosensei._ She thought and put it in a box. _Aguri_. Another box. The next one was too hard, she could still feel his warmth, and the sensation as it slowly faded into something chilling.

She couldn't control that pain, so she blotted out his face in her mind, took that name and crushed it, made in invisible.

With that she could walk again, she went to jiggled the handle. It door was solid, but like she thought it would be no problem. She didn't have any supplies with her, but she could improvise somehow. She walked to the sink and turned the nob, but nothing came out.

Just by knowing she had no access to anything made her throat dry. When was the last time she drank or ate? Or slept for that matter. She smacked her dry lips, and ran her hands over her skin, weather beaten by the wind.

The room was so cramped, even someone as tiny as Kayano had no room to pace. Terasaka must be absolutely dying if he hadn't already punched down a wall. Kayano hopped on the bed with the full intention of drawing plans in her head, but once she was off her feet she felt the sudden force of fatigue. She was so, so tired.

Everything just exhausted her. The day had been tense and nerve-wracking and physically painful, but watching Kurosensi be blasted into pieces while he moved over Nagis- the boy's still body. That was worse than any tentacle strangling her nervous system or spontaneously combusting pieces of her body.

Kayano felt sick. And the sickness was growing, from the arms that held the boy, down to her stomach, wrenching and twisting it, to the parchness of her throat. This sickness was black and oily and she was drowning in it.

If this is what she was left with, then she would rather Kurosensei just let her die the day she gave into her hatred, let her turn to ashes.

She didn't want it like this. If Kurosensei had to die she wanted to kill him herself, with everyone he loved by his side, just like Kurosensei promised it would happen. They would circle him as stronger, better people, ready to move on. But he died knowing he had let them down, he died at the hands of mad men who gloated their victory, who sneered at their tears, who proved how weak she really was and how miserably infantile their relationship with Kurosensei was.

So tired.

Before she could let sleep consume her, the door opened and Kayano shot up, alert once again. She was embarrassed that she could fall asleep here of all places, wolves roamed these halls.

This time it was a different man, he didn't look like a doctor or military, but he had sharp eyes, a shaved head, and a well pressed suit, pinstriped and meticulous .

He opted not to sit down, instead chose to tower in front of her, he stuck out his chest and folded his arms behind his back, making sure to look down on her. Kayano slipped into her actress role; if you boil down acting down in its crudest form- it was simply the manipulation by people. She knew what to look for to bounce off of, what to say to draw them in and satisfy them.

Kayano glanced at his shoes, they were slightly platformed to give him extra height. He was trying to make himself look bigger, more authoritative, to exude the natural authority that would usually cow someone young into immediately obedience. This man reminded her of the chairman, she can work with that.

Kayano transformed herself accordingly. This kind of man treated rebellion as a challenge; she needed to be quieter, calmer, but resolute.

"Hello Kayano-chan," he said. This one didn't identify himself either, but he wasn't trying to present a person, he was trying to be a voice of authority.

"Hello, sir," her voice went higher, sweeter, her eyes rounded in innocence. He liked that, instant submission.

"You must be very confused right now," he told her, his voice was strict and low. It wasn't a question Kayano noted, he told her what she felt and would probably try and tell her how to respond to those feelings, this man was dangerous. "But rest assured, we are working for you and your friends. As long as you cooperate, we will resolve this matter and you will be allowed to leave."

"Cooperate…in what way?" she asked. He shifted on his feet, and she knew she probably said the wrong thing. She shouldn't have asked that question and let him talk to his resolution, he would have given the answer anyway. Save the inquiry for questions that matter. She could kick herself if she had the mental fortitude to do so.

"Let's get right to the point then," he stood at the door, the light inside her room was dim and yellow, and cast everything in a hazy glow, but outside in the hall was bright and glaring to the point where it looked like his back was shining. She winced when she struggled to look at his face because the halo around him was too intense. "The public doesn't know anything that has transpired. We've decided to address this as a terrorist attack."

That… made sense. Did that mean he wanted them to play along? She swallowed the question, it wasn't the right time to ask it. She nodded in compliance.

"You'll get a full debriefing later, and your parents will be reached to know that you are safe, but this is all superfluous. What's important is the aftermath, and what you do in the wake of these trying times. We're doing our best to shield the public from the unfortunate mess we were forced in. This secrecy is not just for your sake, but for the public sake. And what's for the good for the public is often an ugly thing, it involves a great many unpleasant promises and work that should be hidden, which is why you will help us."

"I… I want to help," she said like a good little girl should.

"That's good Kayano." He let a file drop in front of her, when she reached for it, he abruptly slammed his hand down on top.

"Kayano Kaede, born January ninth to a construction worker and a secretary, completely average in school and placed 42nd in the second semester midterms, somehow but managed to pass the entrance exam on the first try."

Kayano's eyes widened as he began to prattle off facts about her pseudo life. He looked satisfied at her response, he believed he shocked her but he had given more to Kayano than he meant to. It meant that they were digging into their lives, but not to the extent that they had blown Kayano's cover. It did not seem like this misstep was due to a lack of importance or negligence, but more likely the sheer volume of people they had to handle.

She was still Kaede Kayano, Kurosensei must have convinced Karasuma not to detail it in any report, he was still protecting her even after death. Safe, for now at least, further investigation would eventually lead to them finding holes in her life.

"You would fall into mediocrity," he continued. "But at the same time, you are at a crossroads, we could use your help and in turn we could mold you into something great. There are far worse monsters in this world than those that lingered in your class. Say yes to help us and we'll help you."

Kurosensei was no monster. This man was either an idiot or can't be trusted.

"I should ask my parents," she lied.

He frowned. "Like Class E's operation this is strictly confidential. You will not inform anybody of this."

Kayano shook her head, as long as she demanded for her parents, they would be unable to pressure her and she wouldn't look too independent. "I think my mom is worried."

He glared with a calculated stoicism, and Kayano could feel her skin crawl. With meticulous pace he walked to the other side, eyes never leaving hers. She had the distinct impression he was not use to rejection.

"This is a pressing matter," his voice was a low rumble, like heavy footsteps that quaked wood floors. "But we are nothing if not charitable, I see you need to calm down. Take a few minutes to think it over before you say yes. Remember that this is a calling." A man to her left tossed a bundle to her. "Clothes. Change into it; we can't have you waiting in those filthy garments. We will return."

She bobbed her head as they walked out, eyeing them closely as the heavy door creaked shut. His words drifted in before it closed completely. "Remember Kayano, this is your only chance to do what is right. And you do want to do what is right."

A click came with the lock. Kayano sighed, utterly drained. She undressed, her old assassination uniform had clung to her skin from the warm blood, but it had long been dry and when she shed her clothes, the flakes peeled from her and dusted the ground. The clothes they gave her were heavy and dark, with long sleeves and long pant legs, the material was thick and scratchy on her skin, but it was better than wearing his blood.

Now that it was all said in done, Kayano didn't know what to do next. She didn't know how to live with it, the weight of a boy in her arms. The smile that died from Kurosensei's face and in turn metamorphosed into a sorrowful sort of anger, knowing that he died knowing he had failed two of his protégées.

One had a dream he was working for and the other bled for redemption, and in the end none of it mattered.

Kayano rolled to the side and vomited in the sink. She wiped her mouth, the taste lingered and the smell invaded her nose making her sicker. She was too bone weary to dwell on the acidic burn of her throat so she settled in the examination bed, it was hard and unforgiving but at this point she couldn't care less. The tiredness was like sand in her eyes, and she felt her mind drifting to oblivion.

She didn't know how long it was until a new man arrived, jolting her aware before she could really fall into anything that resembled sleep. This new one was a completely different personality, a softer face and figure, and a lot kinder in a way that felt dishonest. He also attempted to her get her to say yes to the vague auspices of their goal. When she didn't, he too left, and once again she tried to fall asleep, only to be awakened by someone else.

It happened over and over again, that she felt her consciousness was being stretched thin. She had long lost all sense of time, moving forward was measured by repetitions of the same cycle and no one would tell her the time.

She could feel her frustration build with each new arrival. Not only was she running on empty, but it began to physically get uncomfortable. The heat wasn't unbearable but it was hot enough to be unsettling, and she was hungry and thirsty but no matter how many times she asked they wouldn't bring her anything to eat or drink.

The fourth time they left the overhead light began to blink in and out, and the stuttering of brightness gave her a headache she couldn't ignore.

"Could you please do something about the light," she almost begged. Turn it off or fix, whatever.

The woman smiled, and Kayano got the distinct impression that this is what she wanted.

"Of course," she said before they walked out again, and it continued to rapidly flicker until had to close her eyes for respite.

The sixth time the door opened came, it brought two men to badger her. They rapid fire questioned her, wearing her down to nothing but nerves and twitches, and she couldn't concentrate with the speed of the interrogation and the pounding in her head.

"You know, all your friends all said yes," said the short one in the middle of his pestering, and Kayano felt rage and bile almost spill out of her. She resisted the urge to wring their necks because _they have no idea what they are talking about_. _They wouldn't fall for them, not with what everything Kurosensei taught us._

But Kurosensei died regardless, didn't he? When she refused them, she did so a little louder than she had meant to.

In the flickering dimness of the sick light, Kayano stomach panged with hunger, the sweat slid down her unwashed skin and dampened her dark heavy clothes so they felt even heavier, and her throat screamed for something to quench it, made worse with her complete mental and physical fatigue that all of these men were exasperating.

She was in a bad place.

But Kayano had been worse, and when she was about to snap she summoned whatever helped her get through the times when her clothes were soaked in her sister's blood instead of a boys, whether that strength be from strength or pure contempt.

She needed a goal, something to catch all her scattering thoughts into one focus and drown out her agony.

Take away all the pain and distractions, strip it from her like layers, and she found her immediate objective, escape. She would not be tied down here, with men that would use her and her friends hours after they stood by and watched a Yanagisawa steal Kurosensei's life which was rightfully theirs. And then they gave the bounty to Yanagisawa, with the thanks of a grateful nation.

Yanagisawa. Shiro. Kayano's grip tightened until her fingernails drew blood on her palms. There it was, that was what she was left with. Him, laughing and living when none of the people she loved could do so anymore. He did it, he took everything away from her, slowly skinning her of everything she cared about.

 _When I set my mind to it, I really get into it_.

With her purpose steadfast in her head, everything else fell into place. Her exhaustion and pain fell away as mild inconveniences, her grief and frustration are were pushed aside and the world sharpened and simplified.

With her goal came the need to understand her obstacles.

She understood what these people were doing to her, why they took away all sense of time, no visible watches, no windows- in order to get her to say yes they needed to strip her of all control. They purposefully agitated her with blinking lights to produce irritation. They fed her nothing, they kept waking her to keep her tired. They gave her thick clothes, and raised the temperature just hot enough for discomfort. None of these things alone were enough to trigger any sort of complaint of conspiracy, but prolonged exposure would eventually lend itself to break most people.

She wasn't most people.

"Okay," she lied when they came the eighth time. "I'll do it." They smiled and opened the door for her.

With as little as she knew, blind escape was too risky, it would be better to just pretend to give in and let them hand her the keys. They wouldn't have been suspicious, she was sure she was looked awful as she felt, smelling of vomit and sweat, her hair tangled down her face and her eyes sunken and her body near shaking with hunger. Let them think they broke her.

Still, her window of opportunity was limited, the longer she stayed the more they would expect and the greater the chance they would piece together the incomplete parts of her made up story. Once they figured out she was not Kaede Kayano, her freedom would really be gone.

She must have been in her room for too long because once she emerged in the hallway the light was so intense she had to be escorted half blind. They had given her no shoes so the floor was chilly against her toes, and when the full effects of the air conditioner blasted on her skin, wet with sweat, it made her shiver.

"Here kid." A young soldier gave her bottle of water, almost sounding remorseful about the whole thing.

Pride be damned, she greedily took it, not even bothering to give a thankyou, and cool relief slid down her tongue and her throat and her entire body quivered with reprieve. She could weep.

She returned the drink and they offered her a blanked around her shoulders, she didn't bother memorizing their faces; easier to think of them as faceless obstacles, ready to be overcome. She studied the building again, looking for escape, there were still no windows anywhere and too many doors, but there weren't many security guards at all. The ones they had were young and bored.

Kayano felt her heartbeat quicken, the beginnings of adrenaline pump through her body. This was going to be easier than she thought, and she was going to leave soo-

"They let you out of the hole," a voice drawled. Her stomach sank.

"Karma-kun."

It wasn't a lie when the men said that her classmates said yes. It wasn't just some weird tactic that they used on weak kids to coax them into signing their life away. Karma gave in, and if Karma gave in, everyone else would fall.

Injustice replaced her blood, it pumped in her body.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Karma, her voice strained.

Karma just gave her a look, removed from usual casual bravado and sardonic confidence, this was a Karma she has never seen, with bruises under dull eyes and his usual slouch even more tired. He said nothing. He didn't even smirk.

"You said yes?" she whispered. This was Karma. _Karma_ , the man who would rather set himself on fire then get on his knees. Then she looked past him, and half the class was lingering in the open.

"So did you," was Karma's reply. Kayano shook her head, then made sure no one was paying attention to them.

"I'm escaping. Before they can find out who I really am."

Karma simply shrugged.

"If you want, I'll take you with me. All of you."

"I don't think I want to."

She searched him his face to find anything from the old Karma, the one that jumped off a cliff to open Kurosensei to assassination, that led the charge against Nagisa for the right to keep on their path, the boy that dominated school. She just saw a very tired looking middleschooler.

"You want to stay?"

"I wanted to kill Kurosensei." His head cocked and he finally gave her a weak smile, full of self loathing. "Look at where we are now. This is what we have left. This is his great legacy, assassination. I'm just continuing on my road.

He added after a second; "It has to be worth something."

Karma doesn't do physical affection, but he leaned in and patted her on the shoulder like he was comforting her. He turned his head near her temple and spoke low so no one could hear. "Okuda says there's a vent in the girl's bathroom, small enough for someone like you. I don't know where it takes you, but the guards don't follow you in."

Kayano tentatively reached for his hand and squeezed like she was returning the reassurance.

"Got it."

Thank goodness they knew nothing about Karma, otherwise this closeness would have set red flags. Kayano pulled away with a nod and Karma leaned on the wall with his hands in his pockets, looking bored with the entire thing. He motioned his head towards Manami Okuda who was rubbing the ends of her braid in neurotic fashion.

"Manami-chan, go to the bathroom with me." Manami stared at her friend before quickly lunging int a hug. Manami didn't know the meaning of the word subtly, but Kayano was grateful none the less, and the warmth of it surprisingly caused her to waver a bit on her feet. She squeezed her back for a second, and she could feel Manami's glasses slip from her face from the crush. She giggled, and from anyone else's perspective it was just two friends reuniting after an awful trauma, and not like the goodbye it was.

"Let's go," she whispered, her voice thick with sadness. Okano, Kanazaki, and Rio followed them, they must have known what was going on. There was safety in numbers, it was easier for one girl to slip away from a crowd than alone. Too smart for their own good, all of them really.

"Good luck," Okuda whispered as she fiddled with her glasses. Okuda made up for her extreme nervousness with a compulsive need for preparation, and as a result she kept a lockpicking tool in the thick frames of her glasses legs.

Kayano would miss them, more than she realized.

"You too," she said, "And if you ever need help escaping, I'll be on the other side."

Kayano looked at the small hole in the wall, and resolved to make it through, no matter what. She would fight her way out of the building if she had to break her own bones to fit, and she would focus on the one thing that would keep her going.

 _Yanagisawa._

His presence was everywhere, lingering like a foul stench, a gluttonous pride that devoured everything. She'd end him. If she had to throw herself away to do that, well, that was acceptable. She'd leave her dreams here, with the final wishes of Kurosensei, the warmth of her sister, and she the name of a boy she would never speak.

As Rio provided her leverage to lift herself into the vent, a funny thought struck her. It almost made her laugh.

Here, at the end of it all, the final chapters of Class E, she found herself in the very same place she was in the beginning.

Alone, and ready for revenge.

* * *

A/N: A new chapter story. For some reason, I can't get back into the groove of writing at the level that I want. And it shows in this chapter, rereading this prologue was EXTREMELY rough, but I hope it will get better as it goes on. I have a few chapter rough drafts done, and a general idea of where I'm going, but for the most part I'm just going to just write it all out blindly. I actually had to rewrite a huge chunk of this prologue because I decided to change a major plot point right away.

I dunno if anyone read my earlier Assclass oneshots, but these will not be like that. I'm pretty horrid at writing comedy and wanted to challenge myself on those stories, this is going to be decently dark. I was battling out whether or not this would be rated M because of later violence, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

For those wondering what kind of story this is: it focuses mostly on the story of Kayano and Karma, the plot is pretty much evenly split between the two despite this prologue being strictly Kayano centric. I wanted to write a Kayano related plot, but with where she is going I needed someone to carry the other side of what was going on, and Karma was the best for it. On occasion there will be other character spotlights. I could not write this story without OC's but they are mostly in the fashion of the OC's here, I needed people to run whatever project the rest of Class E enlisted in. Some will be important.

This story was based off the premise of Karasuma saying that if Class E didn't kill Kurosensei, it would probably mess them up, I'm paraphrasing but that's the impression that I got. So here, Kurosensei was killed by Yanagisawa/Shiro and/or the fake god of death, and the fake god of death killed Nagisa instead of Kayano because I wanted it to be that way. Yanagisawa was awarded the bounty, and didn't face any charges because he technically didn't hurt Nagisa directly.

And because pairings mean a lot to other people, I'll be upfront with it. There will be a lot of Kayano and Nagisa musings because they are my otp. Expect sprinklings of Sugino/Kanazaki, Hayami/Chiba, Manami/Karma, and Megu/Yada (y u not popular cuties?) in various amounts.


	2. Chapter 1: A Time for Appropriate Names

_Project End_

Chapter 1: A Time for Appropriate Names

* * *

Karma didn't get the obsession with white, honestly. White ceilings, white walls, white doors; since the past year, when he and his classmates shook hands with the devil and promised all to be good little spies for the government, he'd been into dozens of different training rooms, in dozens of different prefectures.

All of them white and minimalist to a severe degree. Normally interior decorating didn't keep him up at night, but he was starting to feel the repetition in it all. Repetition is boring, and boring was something almost fatal to him. It made things mundane, at worst it made him predictable, and predictability was exploitable.

"Hello Karma-kun," his handler said, sitting on the white table in the middle of the room; he was a tall man, but unimpressive in every other way. Slightly doughy, sleepy eyes, big nose, and a bowler hat on top hair that wasn't quite graying, nothing about him drew the eye, but it was probably that way by design.

"Hiroshi," Karma replied in a cheerful greeting that fooled no one. Hiroshi Watanabe gave him a quirk of a smile, evidently he found someone as young as Karma calling him by his first name darkly amusing. If there was one thing that could be slightly unnerving about Hiroshi, it was the horrible state of his teeth; it was yellowing and chipped and completely unsymmetrical, when he smiled it looked like broken shards jutting out of his gums.

"You really should smile less, Hiroshi," Karma informed him.

"Call me Watanabe-san. An entire damn year of constant training and still a little shit," he said in good humor, his breath stank of cigarettes, "Can't believe no one has beat manners inta you."

"Someone would actually have to beat me first."

Hiroshi smiled wider to that, and pulled a small white chair in front of the table for Karma to sit in.

"No training today? That's fine, I'm good with these games," Karma yawned, taking his seat.

"We live to serve at Project E."

Karma hated that name.

Class E was a skeleton of their former selves, his classmates were separated and the class gutted and transformed into a government in-training espionage collective, and they slapped the class with the name Project End. They took twenty five ruined kids at the end of their ropes, and continue to break them down until what was left of their identity was nothing but fine dust, then meticulously rebuilt Class E into what they needed them to be. It was an intensely intrusive experience, every part of their life was prodded and poked, they were taken from their dreams and their friends, and their privacy vanished.

He could deal with that, it was all part of the deal. But the moniker of "E" was a reminder of just how they never did get to accomplish killing Kurosensei. Being forced under the name that chained them down to the worst failure of their lives was an insult.

It couldn't be more sadistic if they tried.

But there had to be a level sociopathy if you were okay with turning newly minted highschoolers into professional spies. They didn't even have a world ending threat like Kurosensei as an excuse.

You also had to be slightly sociopathic if you were going to handcuff said sixteen year old to a table.

Karma tensed and resisted the urge to break all of Hiroshi's fingers right there as he clamped cool metal of the handcuff on his wrist, and then the other end to the table leg. His body was rigid, only offset by a smile that carved its way on his face, edged with the promise of threat in the near future.

"Hi~ro~shi," Karma sang with a light hearted malice. "You know I don't like being tied down."

"Good. I take delight in making you uncomfortable," Hiroshi said completely unfazed. The man seemed to be under the mistaken impression that Karma's warnings were cute, and he would have to be corrected on that one day. As painfully as possible.

After he finished securing Karma, he took off his bowler hat and placed it rim up on the table in front of him, and then placed two small pieces of white paper on the other side.

"There's lots of things you're not going to like about this next… game," he said. "Maybe we'll finally get the beating that teaches you to call me Watanabe-san."

When he patted Karma on the head condescendingly, the urge to break his fingers doubled. Instead Karma reclined, let his smile grow wilder on his face as he watched Hiroshi leave with a skip in his step.

He was going to let Karma stew. He was that kind of man, seemingly disarming, but enjoyed messing with his kids as he did "teaching" them. Karma supposed it was as much his fault as anybody else, he completely cracked his last two handlers before they gave him Hiroshi Watanabe. One had a temporary mental breakdown and the other ran away, but Hiroshi just seemed to laugh at all that.

At least he was honest in his vindictiveness. That made him better than the others.

The doors creaked open as Hiroshi escorted a stranger in, he too was handcuffed with a bag over his head, hulking and clumsy as he was blindly pushed towards the chair.

Ugh. He was wearing white too.

Karma considered burning the whole building now, honestly.

"I'm sure you're confused," Hiroshi started.

"And I'm sure you care," Karma said with an air of nonchalance. He was eyeing the new man as Hiroshi slowly lifted the bag over his head. Hiroshi looked at Karma with an oddly enthusiastic expectancy as the bag slipped from his face, revealing a dull looking man with more scars than hair on his head. Karma lifted a brow, unimpressed and waiting for an explanation.

It almost looked like Hiroshi pouted, which was not an attractive thing for a man to do. "He's wanted for murder. At least try to watch news more. It was very hard to get him you know, at least pretend to be excited."

The new man scowled, muscles rippled under a white t-shirt, ready to pounce if the handcuffs hadn't stopped him. The table proved to be heavier than either of them expected, and it kept them properly subdued. _Burn it down, definitely._

Hiroshi looked at the new man and with an air of good nature asked, "How would you like the chance to be a free man?" Both of them blinked, and the man's mouth swung open in disbelief. He was slow, partly because he was stupid but also partly because he was obviously foreign and might have had issue with the language. But as he digested the question, Karma could practically smell the stink of desperation.

Like a snakeoil salesman, Hiroshi slid on the desk, taking a slim fountain pen from his breast pocket, and slammed it down on the table.

"All you have to do is play a game."

"You're really hamming it up today, Hiroshi." Karma settled back in his chair, slouching his posture while keeping his eyes trained on the prisoner, who was now glancing between the two in confusion.

"… This is a joke right?" the convict said, his accent was thick and his voice was low with uncertainty.

Hiroshi shook his head, "No, no. I wouldn't joke about something like this. Why would I drag you all the way here, save you from execution, just for a laugh?" The man said nothing, frowning in thought.

"Get on with it old man," Karma drawled. The convict paused, looking at Karma once again in doubt, but nodded anyway.

"Here's the rules of the game," Hiroshi said tapping the pencil again. "You write 'Free' and 'Dead' on those pieces of paper, then you put in the hat. And whichever this boy draws will determine your fate. Free means you get the key, an open door, and you can do whatever you want from here to the car outside." Hiroshi smiled at Karma as he stilled, something about that grin made Karma think that whoever this man was, he was not child friendly.

"Is… is that it?" the prisoner asked thickly.

"That's it!" Hiroshi clapped his hands together. "Easy isn't it? You write, Karma grabs the paper, we read the paper, and you're either free today, or have a private execution like planned." He leaned closer to the man and whispered, "Write well. This game holds your fate."

"Oi, oi." Karma straightened a little in his chair, the metal chaffing his wrist. He struggled to keep his tone cool. "What's the point of a playing a game that's this obviously rigged?" He stared down Hiroshi as hard as he could, amber eyes narrowing and hard lines creasing on his face, but his smirk remained plastered on his face like he didn't know what else to do with it.

It was clear to Karma that whoever this criminal was, while stupid, wasn't a completely brick. Even someone like him could see the easy way out, he could simply write "Free" on both papers and be handed the key and a perfect hostage. And while Karma was pretty confident in holding his own, he wasn't really sure what he could do handcuffed to a table.

"Don't be so paranoid, Karma-kun," Hiroshi, that rotten bastard, said. "Have a little faith. Understanding people really is the key to survival, do you really think I would put you in harm's way?" And then he did a stupid walk out the door to anonymous safety and left Karma with an all too enthusiastic criminal.

Karma strained against the cuff, but it wasn't budging. He shifted in the chair, hoping to be as subtle as possible. No way in hell would he let anyone see he was struggling, he wouldn't give Hiroshi the pleasure of watching him squirm.

The convict scribbled the katakana on the papers eagerly as Karma inspected the table with a glance. It was solid, nailed down to the floor and thick enough that it wouldn't break no matter how hard he could kick on it.

The convict folded the papers in his large hands with such care they may as well be made of gold, and placed it in the hat. He didn't even bother to hide the obviousness of which he cheated, his grin was so wide it threatened to split his face, he was breathing heavy with anticipation, and he was staring down Karma like he was the last meal of a starving man. The table was too long to hand the hat in person so the man slid it to Karma. Karma stared at it dully.

 _Think_. He'd experienced enough in Project E to absolutely believe that they were psychotic enough to use an actual criminal in this game. The danger itself was real.

But Hiroshi wouldn't bother with a silly game if the only purpose was to see if he was lucky enough to not die, _this_ was a game, and games could be won logically. Even if Project E was run by the most pungent of assholes, there was a method to their madness and they wouldn't risk an resource mindlessly if there wasn't a way out.

A fist slammed down. "Pick a fucking paper, kid!"

Hiroshi told him that understanding people was the key to survival. Karma didn't gamble.

"Right," Karma said. He picked a paper at random, and held it up with the best shit eating grin he could muster, teeth sharp and a cocky tilt of his head. "This one."

The man looked as if he won the lottery. Then Karma put the paper in his mouth and swallowed. The man frowned in bewilderment at the same time Hiroshi came in. He too was smiling like a jackass. _A fucking smile for everyone who thinks they get what they want_.

"Oh, you've chosen?" Hiroshi asked. Karma nodded and pointed to his mouth.

"I did, but I got hungry waiting for your slow ass."

"Oh dear, well I guess that's destroyed," Hiroshi nodded in false melancholy. "But luckily, we've got the other paper, right? So whatever the paper remaining said, you chose the opposite." He pulled the other paper from the hat. "It says free. I guess that means you picked death."

Revelation dawned on the man as attempted to jump up in righteous indignation, but he was too big and his arm yanked him back down, crashing his chin on the table with such force with such violence it threatened to split open. "That wasn't the fucking deal! The paper!" he screamed, spit flying when he began cursing in his native tongue.

Hiroshi wiped his face with his handkerchief. "I'm afraid I don't get what the outrage is for. You wrote free and death on the papers didn't you? So whether or not we read the paper in the hat or the one Karma-kun chose, it would have been the same." He tossed Karma the key.

"You fuckers!" he screeched as reached for them in desperation, blood began to coat the arm as the handcuff kept him in place, grinding against his wrist and peeling of his skin like an overripe fruit. "I'll kill you!"

Once free Karma rubbed his own wrist. "I know how you feel," Karma said to the wailing man as he heaved his body against the table that didn't budge. "I've been picturing breaking Hiroshi's fingers all afternoon."

Hiroshi escorted Karma out of the room, shaking his head. "That wasn't very nice of you, Karma-kun. I didn't know you thought of me that way."

"You would too, if you had been handcuffed with a maniac by a tremendous asshole. He was the real deal, wasn't he?" Karma said lightly, as the screams and cries faded into the background. He was still compulsively rubbing his wrist and the grin was straining his face.

"Yes, but I had faith in you. If you couldn't solve something as petty as this then I wouldn't have bothered to drudge up some random man on death row," Hiroshi shrugged.

"How did you manage that?"

"Little favors. Everyone is good at something, I'm good at making friends with all sorts of connections. I've been told I'm a pretty likable person after all." He looked at his watch. "Oh my, look at the time. You should get home and I need to write my report."

"That's it for today?" Karma asked a little incredulous. "You brought me all the way over here after school just to mess with me? You're fucked in the head, Hiroshi."

"I'm not messing with you, I'm teaching you," Hiroshi replied as he straightened his tie. "If you feel like your time has been wasted, I could always do you a favor and make it worthwhile. Maybe next time we can ask Manami-chan to join us."

Karma gave him his best bored look. Hiroshi made a habit of dangling Okuda in front of him like she was some sort of prize, despite the fact that Karma never asked or sought her out. Karma rarely met others from Project E in general, and it was better that way. He had been a solitary animal at the start and that was how he wanted to continue.

There was nothing left of his sentimentality to tempt, but when he told Hiroshi this it only provoked him. And the more Hiroshi treated her like a bargaining chip, the more Karma refused to blink in the face of those offers. Though it was a shame, one that Karma did his best not to dwell on, that it had to be Okuda he played with.

She was always shy, bordering on completely socially incompetent. She had been making leaps and bounds under Kurosensei, and once upon a time, Karma enjoyed watching her growth, he had been proud even, they were something like friends. But with Project E Okuda was taken from school, isolated, and her growth didn't just stop, she regressed.

Last he had seen her, Hiroshi pulled her along to prevent Karma from causing havoc in front of his boss. She had been frail, more frail than he remembered, her eyes were wide and nervous, and Okuda who once smiled and giggled when they sat next to each other at lunch, could barely speak to him without her speech devolving into a stuttering mess.

If it had been any other classmate other than Karma that saw her that day, they would have been enraged to see her like this. In another time, he would have been tempted to go along with whatever Hiroshi was doing. But Karma didn't care anymore, and maybe if he could show Hiroshi that, he would finally leave her alone like she should have been.

So Karma walked away with a distinct air of uninterest. "I'm going home, Hiroshi."

"And I have my own appointments. My son has soccer game today. I've missed me these past couple of times, and you know kids, they're sensitive at that age. We have to be there for them."

He walked Karma to the door, not mentioning Okuda or the convict again, looking happy to have skipped out early.

"Treat your sons better than you treat me, Hiroshi," Karma said as he watching him leave.

"It's been a good day. You just don't know it yet," Hiroshi said from over his shoulder. "And call me Watanabe-san, you brat."

* * *

Sometimes, she forgot which name was hers. It wasn't like she was particularly forgetful, she just had so many that in moments of adrenaline crash, they all jumbled together in her head. Mixed together in a heap of confusion and identity until it was near impossible to organize, thoughts like mud.

"What the hell, Kayano?" Takebayashi sighed as he gave her a look over.

 _That's right, I'm Kayano here._ Good name, her favorite one. He grabbed her arm and helped her through the window gingerly, careful not to let any blood drip on the window sill. Leaving evidence always came back to bite someone in the ass.

"You're a damned mess," Takebayashi mumbled, and he rarely cursed unless things were bad. She must look as horrible as she felt, her skin was pasty, her bones rattled with exertion, and lines felt like they were burning sears on her back.

"That's why I'm here doc," she grinned much like old Kayano would and Takebayashi snorted.

"I'm not a doctor."

"Might as well be. What kind of teenager hordes medical supplies under his bed?"

Takebayashi snapped disposable gloves on with distinct irritation. "Then take my advice, stop climbing through sixteen year old's windows for medical assistance and go to a hospital. Some of us like to watch our vocaloid videos in peace."

Kayano sat on his desk where his lamp lit her back well, the red stickiness evident. He leaned the petite girl forward and lifted up the back of her shirt slightly. He sighed again, lifted a little more and saw her ribs peeking out, and sighed once more for added effect. He took a pair of scissors and cut away where the pieces of shirt were shards of glass embedded in her skin through the fabric.

And she liked that shirt.

"I hope it was worth it," he mumbled, he took tweezers and pulled the first shard out. She ignored the shrill sensation as she removed the black shirt all the way; it was useless torn to shreds. She placed the shirt next to her and Takebayashi plopped the free glass in the middle of it.

The second shard was much larger, and she jumped ever so slightly at the sharpness being lodged out of skin and muscle. Takebayashi's grumbled at her to stay still in a long suffering tone.

"Nope. Was a dead end." Another glass shard pulled from her skin, and clinked with the others with a lovely sound.

"Great, I love wasting my nights helping idiots who don't have the good sense to ignore avoidable situations, just so that they can bleed on my carpet."

"How else are you going to get girls into your room?"

He scoffed at the idea. "I have no use for 3D girls." One more glass shard, so tiny it was like it wasn't there. "That's the last of it. Don't get up yet, damnit it still needs to be dressed. Does all of Class E lack common sense?"

He rolled his swivel chair to the otherside of the desk and began to search through his drawers, and slamming them in annoyance when he didn't find what he wanted.

"You're going to wake up your parents."

"They don't care. Anyway if they come in and see a real girl in my room, it'll probably convince them it's all a dream." He shrugged and grabbed what he had been searching for, a roll of bandages and hydrogen peroxide.

She almost hissed at the sting when he brought the damp cloth down on her cuts, it burned above the damage, bubbling out the impurities, but thankfully the cuts were shallow. It looked worse than it was and she was slowly feeling better, even with the persistent throbbing.

"I'm not going to ask," he said as he wrapped the strips of rough bandages around her body, "Because I'm too tired to care and you're an idiot. But I'm just going to say, whatever it is you are doing, you should stop. There's only so much I can do. People are going to start asking questions if supplies just start disappearing."

"Yeah I know," she breathed out. "But it's gotten easier since your dad became dean of the hospital right? Convenient."

Takebayashi pushed his glasses up, the reflected gleam from the lamp obscured how his eyes hardened at her statement. "Yeah, real convenient." The sound of his voice informed her how little of it was a happy coincidence, and exactly what he thought about that. She'd have to avoid that topic.

When he was done, he skidded to his drawers again and threw a shirt at her. Kayano had always been tiny in every way possible, but Takeyabashi wasn't much better. He was average height, but always stick thin, with pointy joints and a thin waist that made him appear scrawny, so the shirt almost fit her.

She looked down on the slogan.

"Moe is life," she read.

"And don't you forget it," he replied as he removed his gloves, and wrapped all the offending evidence in her destroyed shirt. "Dump this for me. I think my handler has people going through my trash again."

Kayano nodded, knowing that he wasn't just speaking out of paranoia. Kayano had sparse communication with some of her classmates, usually to get favors from them, but each contact was getting harder and harder to make without detection. The men they worked for held each of her friends under a microscope, like they hadn't completely trusted them with their silence even though they managed to keep Kurosensei a secret from their families for months.

It was trickier for Kayano, who had ducked their surveillance after she escaped, and they had been searching for her ever since. Her friends played dumb as well, which she was eternally grateful for.

She didn't want to think about the possibility that their silence on her situation is what led to the trust issues.

"Have you talked to Itona lately?" she asked him.

"Are you going to bum favors off him too?" he asked as he began to wipe down his tweezers.

A little bit of guilt bubbled in her throat and it tasted like bile, but she swallowed it down. "I just need some advice on how to get data out of a computer."

"Well first off, that's a terrible idea. Itona is into engineering and robotics, and that's a far cry from hacking. And also, no, I haven't seen him."

Kayano frowned. "I thought you were both working on explosive detail."

"They put me full time into medical training." He removed his glasses and wiped away imaginary stains, he let his disgust show in his hazy unfocused glare. With a bitterness added, "Right after my father became Dean of Medicine."

That was strange. Not the part of Takebayashi not seeing Itona, from what Kayano gathered, it wasn't unusual for Project E to never see each other. With few exceptions, unless they were undergoing similar specialized training they didn't interact a lot, and the time down was usually heavily monitored. But why would they pull Takebayashi from demolitions? That was one of the more useful trades he had been learning. She wanted to ask further but it wasn't her place. She walked away from them a year and a half ago, and if he wanted her help all he had to do was ask. He knew that, she hoped.

"Got it," she said instead. She flexed experimentally, stretching her back. There was lingering aching, but she was an expert at ignoring pain. No matter how much Takebayashi grumbled, he always pulled through for her, even in the dead of night like right now.

"And Takebayashi," she said with as much earnesty as she could muster.

"Thank you."

"Get off my desk."

* * *

A/N: I like Takebayashi, so I try to use him whenever I can. I really like the idea of Takebayashi being completely done with everyone in their class since he's got medical background and everyone else likes to throw themselves into sharp and explosive things.

And while I try to avoid OC's, it's simply unavoidable in this story. There's not a lot of going on, it's a lot of explanation and showing what their daily lives are like, so the exposition dumps are unfortunate, but necessary.

 **2:** Thank you! I hope I can deliver something a little different than what others have out there. There's not much happening in this chapter, but hopefully when the plot picks up you'll stay interested.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Oh I remember, thank you so much for this review and the other, it's really helpful because the reviews are pretty insightful. I'm glad you liked War on Boredom, because I had a lot of trouble with it, mostly because of the aforementioned "bad with comedy." I'm glad it came off as successful.

I think one of my favorite trends on is people looking at general shounen tropes, and realizing, "actually this is pretty messed up" especially since most of the characters tend to be school age. And so definitely, even if they are a year or two older, there's this weird dichotomy of treating these kids as adults and how expecting them to be assassins is twisted. The line with Hiroshi (the OC) talking about wanting to go to his son's soccer game because he's so sensitive, after putting Karma through a stressful and dangerous game was sort of a play on that, how they don't expect them to be kids anymore.

But you're right, since Class E, they hadn't been "just" kids. It's funny that taking them down a path, one degree off from the other, can change everything.


	3. Chapter 2: A Time for Honey

Chapter 2: "A Time For Honey"

Kayano slipped into the darkness of her apartment with ease, twisting her body from the edge of the balcony into her open window without making a sound. Being small had its advantages, less to see, less noise she made. In the sky of a new moon, she was practically invisible.

Her flat was a skeleton of a home, long shadows lingered where there should have been furniture. The rooms were so bare that if she someone did happen to break in, it would be difficult to convince anyone she had actually lived here. It was a room of the negative space created by her life, but the lack also meant there was no place for anyone to hide. She let seconds lapse into silence, listening for any evidence of infiltration. She had a paranoid fear that maybe someone had found her out and would come to take her away, despite all her precautions.

Nothingness ran supreme, not even the layer of dust was disturbed. She let her breath out and walked to her bedroom, it only had a mattress on the floor and an open suitcase for her clothes. Her footsteps were light but they echoed almost horribly in the emptiness. She didn't bother turning on the lamp, her eyes were well adjusted to the dark.

 _Tonight was a dead end_ , she knew, with the dead end being a plane of glass she was thrown through by an extremely angry, extremely well-armed Yakuza member.

She maneuvered to her wall; it was the only space that was well used. Newspapers clippings scattered its length, detailing mixes of obituaries and the near forgotten "terrorist attack" on their mountain side. To the side, scribbling in ballpoint pen noted various observations, photographs she had taken of various people of dubious importance. She had tacked string, connecting different points of interest, it made her wall look like a cat's cradle of obsessiveness.

A list of names ran down the end, her names, in neat order of appearance in her life, with Akari Yukimara as the first but Kaede Kayano being the largest.

She dropped her hands from her face as soon as she realized she was biting her nail. Biting her nail was a habit of Sora Matsumoto, a different name for an entirely different lead altogether. Maybe she was suffering some sort of blood loss induced forgetfulness, it wasn't like her to mix up personas.

She was Kayano now, and Kayano put her hair into pigtails, she gorged on sweets, she was watched carefully and supported earnestly, and she had been lovingly trained by the best assassins.

Kayano tossed Takeyabashi's shirt for a more presentable dress, slipped off her sneakers with glass still embedded in the soles for a pair of boots. She took a brush to her hair as she stared in the lone mirror.

She looked like hell. She massaged lightly under her eyes, tracing light bags that bruised around amber before picking up some makeup. When she artfully hid the evidence of weariness she let her expression soften, hoping that the harsh lines would disappear.

When she glanced again, her dark hair falling in waves and her face once again looking how a teenager should, she was ready.

She walked to the kitchen and glanced at the time blinking on the microwave.

It was late, but if she left soon she would still be able to make it on time for her next appointment. It would still raise a few eyebrows if she actually decided to go out of her way to see _him_ , but that was fine. A little suspicion worked into her plans.

She mentally ran the timetable in her head, it helped soothe her nerves.

 _Twenty minutes by train, five minutes to the station if I take the shortcuts on the roofs._

When things went well, she was like clockwork. It was a satisfying feeling to have her objectives fall into place in neat sequence, but it was a satisfaction that often evaded her. Very few things ever went according to plan. She had learned that the hard way.

It was the last train for the night, and the car was empty except for one extremely drunk gentleman, dressed in rags and smelling like sewer, dozing off in the seats. The Kayano in her hoped that he found a good place to sleep tonight, it was too cold to be down on his luck.

She found peace in the rhythmic swaying of the train, clicking on its rails. While being careful not to lean on her back where the scars still burned, she let the tempo lull her into thought.

Kayano had hoped chasing down the Yakuza would open up some leads. According to the story Kurosensei had told them, Yanagisawa had essentially bought him for human experimentation. And the Japanese Government didn't usually trade individuals to private companies for scientific curiosity. They might have turned a blind eye, but they didn't engage in the buying of selling of people, regardless of them being high profiled criminals.

The only group she thought could actually engage in that sort of trade was the Yakuza, human trafficking was a lucrative business and the Yakuza have had their hands in the pot for a long time. They didn't have a monopoly but they were her best bet. Chasing after random theories on the most powerful crime syndicate in Japan, however, proven not only dangerous, but completely fruitless.

And painful.

The intercom announced her stop, Kayano closed her eyes to ready herself, she sucked in the polluted air and held her breath, and when she opened them again she was Akari Yukimara.

The world changed in her eyes, the light was dimmed, the color grayed, and she could smell the body odor that clung to the seats of the train. The world was sick when she was Akari.

 _Five minutes to the station, twenty on train, ten more to her destination._

There was comfort in manta, as she walked towards where she needed to go, it allowed her to focus her mind.

Akari was patient, always patient, and learned to accept her mistakes and effortlessly diverting her energy into a new path. Akari was more cynical than Kayano, but she was also more proactive. So if haunting the Yakuza's steps didn't work, she'd need a more direct approach to find out more about how Kurosensei came to be.

A familiar voice rang out.

"Well if it isn't Akari. I didn't think you would make it at the dead of night."

Speak the devil's name and the devil shall come.

Yanagisawa came in, billowing white research coat under nauseating florescent light. His wormy lips twisted into a smile, his squinting eyes upturned, greasy hair plastered to sickly pale skin.

Yanagisawa was a mother fucker. Above all else.

"I just wanted to see you," she said as her stomach clenched and twisted, and when she took a breath even the air tasted even more vile.

"I do love your visits," he sneered. He took her in his arms and she imagined breaking them, twisting the joints in all the wrong ways and hearing them crack. But here in his domain, he was well protected, and everywhere else he was too vigilant.

"I figured you'd be in your lab. You're dedicated that way." When he brushed her bangs from her eyes she pictured taking her fingers to the soft of his throat and ripping it out, letting the air and blood rush out of neck and past her fingers.

His fingers brushed her cheek and she let a bit of her disgust slip her face. He would like that.

"One day, it'll be yours too," he said.

 _One day I'll kill him. I'll break every bone in his body and rip the eyes from his face. I'll make him utter the name of every person that died because of him, and it will be the last thing he hears before I crush his heart between my hands._

He loomed in and she could see every pore and every detail she despised up close. She closed her eyes when he kissed her. Lukewarm and disgustingly moist. He tasted like corpses.

"You are my fiancé after all."

* * *

Karma wasn't sure he if he was annoyed or amused.

On one hand, he didn't like surprises, the idea that something would catch him unaware, that people were moving in ways he did not know about, made him itch. It wasn't an itch he could reach, it was deep down, below skin and tissue, in dark places, and it made him want to scratch his skin off. Hiroshi had figured that out early on, and ran with it.

He can deal with near death experiences and murderous teachers and sharp objects pointed at his throat. But not knowing was a vulnerability that he didn't shoulder with grace.

On the other hand, how was _this_ not hilarious?

"Yo, Asano," Karma greeted as he walked past his desk during lunch, he drummed his fingers on the plastic in nonchalance. "Your harem seems to be growing these days."

Asano Gakushuu peered up at him through his bangs and the gaggle of girls that surrounded his desk. He looked at Karma with a mixture of surprise and interest.

In the simpler days of midleschool, they had something like a rivalry. It had been engaging in ways that pushed Karma to betterment, but those moments had long been buried, blasted away along with the shack of Class E.

Karma returned to highschool, looked at Asano and it was looking through foggy lens into limbo. Asano was part of _that_ life, like the rest of school, where they didn't have handlers, where they weren't trained in secrets, where surprises could await them and they didn't want to rip their skin off to satisfy mental irritation. School had become unreality, and Karma dropped that rivalry because there was nothing there anymore.

They barely acknowledged their presence, and if on the off chance that they did, there would probably no reason for Karma to remark on Asano's popularity, which had been a steady presence that didn't merit observation.

"Jealous Akabane? If you need friends I'm happy to help." It was a weak bait, but an eager one. Asano liked the challenge Karma presented, and was miffed and even maybe confused when Karma had just dropped it those years ago.

Karma just waved him off. "Just a warning, if you pick up too many strays one day you're going to attract a dog that bites." The girls made a collective horrified gasp as he walked away, whistling to himself.

A second later one of Asano's followers declared that she was getting Asano a drink, "to wash out the bitter taste of talking to a guy like that" and a short, fizzy brown haired girl came bounding behind him. When she was at Karma's heels she slowed down, the bounce left her walk and her overeager smile melted from her freckled face.

"How long did you know it was me?" The perkiness of her voice instantly dropped to one of scathing annoyance.

The girl kept a half a step behind Karma to avoid the appearance that they were talking, and Karma suppressed a chuckle at her expense. The hallways were busy enough that no one would pay attention to them normally, but regardless of Karma's detachment to the student body at large, he still held a sort of infamy- people knew if he was laughing at nothing it usually meant trouble.

"How long have you been playing him, Kayano?" he retorted vaguely. He had no intention of telling her that he had only just recently figured what was going on.

Even with his back to her, he could he could hear the frown in her voice. "You didn't know that long."

"That's confident of you," he said turning a left at the vending machines. From here they looked as if they were just waiting in line.

"Of course I'm confident, I'm good."

"So am I."

Karma pretended to consider the drinks. "But it does beg the question, what possible angle could you be working Gakushuu? It's not like he's involved with anything in particular."

Kayano stirred behind him, then, especially cautiously she whispered, "I'm trying to get Ritsu."

Karma stopped, his finger lingered on coffee milk, before he had the sense to pull out his change and continue on like he didn't hear anything. "What does Asano have to do with her?"

Ritsu had been decommissioned long ago. She was infinitely useful, but willfully insubordinate. Where most of Project E had taken to listening to orders and learning from their handlers, Ritsu did her best to keep with Kurosensei's wishes. She outright refused orders to dig up more information on not only targets, but her classmates, supported her friends with information they shouldn't have, and obstructed missions she felt they weren't mentally ready to take. The psyche of an AI wasn't as fragile as children it seemed, and when tools were that powerful without a tight leash, it was better to put it down.

"I'm banking on the chairman being too smart and too ambitious to let a program like Ritsu slip past his fingers. She ran through the computer systems of the middleschool portion of his school for years, he had to have done something."

"You think he copied her? Can you even copy an AI?"

"Copied her, duplicated her code, saved some data, I don't know the jargon." Kayano moved up when Karma took his drink and stepped to the side, pretending to be occupied with opening it. "But he's smart enough to capitalize on her presence, and Chairman Asano's office is weirdly difficult to break into. I mean I could…"

"But not without arousing suspicion," Karma finished, leaning against a wall and out of sight. Kayano's lips tightened to a line.

"Right. I screwed up somewhere else and made some noise. I need to be quieter or someone's going to take notice. Anonymity is all I got going for me right now."

Karma took a sip, contemplating what she was saying before he quickly swallowed to prevent choking on a laugh. "Wait, so the reason you're going to Gakus- you're seducing him!" He shook his head as quiet puffs of amusement came out.

Gakushuu had always been one to pursue his advantages to the fullest, and that included his new found popularity. It wasn't a secret that he went through flings with his admirers, taking one and then another with the ease of changing clothes. He didn't date, he'd just wait for someone, male or female, to fling themselves at him, take them to a secluded area, spend their break, then he'd get someone new.

The secluded area was more often than not the chairman's office, one of the few places that he had access to but was virtually untouchable to anyone else.

Kayano bristled as her cheeks dusted pink, which made the idea of her seducing _anyone_ even funnier. "I don't see what's so funny."

"You think this person is his type?" he said with corkscrew grin, looking her up and down. Indeed, she had looked so generic in this getup he thought the only reason she bothered with her disguise was because no one would give her a second thought.

"I don't need to be," she said, picking the option for green tea. "Asano is only attracted to himself. I need to play to his ego, his need to dominate, and then he'll eventually get to me." After picking up the drink, she pressed the button for another strawberry milk.

"Hn." She had a better eye that he thought. It was true, Karma often wondered if Asano bothered with this act because he actually couldn't keep it in his pants, or if this was some peculiar method of solidifying his influence on the school population. He long figured the truth was somewhere in the middle and then discarded the train of thought from his mind, Gakushuu's libido wasn't exactly the most enthralling of mysteries.

"So, what was your angle?" she asked, drinking her own milk. She shivered a little at the taste, she still naturally had a sweet tooth. Some things never change.

"What makes you think I have an angle?" He crushed the finished can in his hands and tossed it to the trash.

"Please. I don't believe for a second you just happened to notice who I was one day. You were paying attention to his inner circle."

"Hmm. Maybe I'm trying to seduce Gakushuu too." Karma laughed at Kayano's expression. "You're right. I was asked to look out for someone in his group. You know Sato?"

Kayano took another sip as she scrunched her nose in concentration. "The guy who leeches off of Asano? Yeah. He's completely unappealing so he lingers around him to pick up any leftover girls. Bit of a creep but completely harmless. Why do you need him?"

"Someone needs his schedule. I've been trying to get time to get his phone, but being subtle has never been my forte. They're all scared of me for someone reason." When another student came to the vending machines, Kayano swiftly turned around and walked towards the class to avoid suspicion. Karma trailed after her, giving her a respectable distance without being out of earshot. "How about a mutual exchange? I scratch your back, you scratch mine."

"Oh?" she mumbled into her straw.

"Distract Sato after school and I'll help you with your plan."

She risked an incredulous look back. "You're not actually going to try and seduce Asano for me, are you?"

Karma shook his head. "No, but I can provide the means of making him more interested in you."

"How?"

"By giving you the only thing he can't get." They were at the classroom doors, and though it would have been less conspicuous for Karma to keep walking so it didn't look as if they knew each other, he took an extra stride to be at her side. Most of the class hadn't bothered to notice, but Asano's eyes sharpened at their proximity, his eyes flittered between the two in confusion.

Karma leaned in and whispered, "My attention."

* * *

Yada had come to the conclusion that she was one of the lucky ones. She also had come to terms with the fact that "lucky" was relative.

Yada was one of the few that were allowed to continue with civilian school, a privilege that came with more freedom than her classmates. Just like luck, "more freedom" was also relative. There was a silent stipulation that if Yada went to school, she were to rub elbows with some of the richer students, but even with the added responsibility, life was a little less stifling with moments away from this facility. Still, they were constantly watching and listening. She was allowed to see Megu, regarding their relationship, but the prospect of "seeing" her girlfriend was stretched thin under watchful eyes.

Which is why she always liked target practice the best. The booming noise of the artillery made it impossible for bugs to pick up any conversation. This was especially helpful in one of the rare moments where she could meet up with others from Project E.

"Got what you needed." Karma held up a small paper to Yada between two fingers, they were the only two at target practice this afternoon. She finished loading her magazine before gingerly placing it on the surface in front of her.

"Appreciate it," she said as she took the paper. "Though you know you don't have to do this in secret, I'm sure Watanabe-san would be fine with you helping me."

"But where's the fun in that?" he said as he began to reconstruct his gun, a well kept SIG Sauer P220. "We're teenagers afterall, keeping a secret or two from our overlords is instinct for us."

"If you say so." She read the paper and looked satisfied. "So his father is staying back Thursday. For work?" She snorted and pocketed her paper. "Good for me I guess," she mumbled as she loaded the clip in the small .22. She liked small guns the best, inconspicuous enough to hide in her boots or purse. They didn't have much stopping power, but she wasn't the greatest of shots anyway, it was accessibility she enjoyed.

"Got to admire work ethic right?" Karma slammed the clip into his gun. "Those long nights cruising for highschool girls."

Her hands paused, holding her noise blocking earmuffs, before lowering them down around her neck. She gave him her best, _I am not happy_ face. He figured it out, _of course_ he figured out, because Karma was too damn smart.

"Don't look so surprised. Why else would you be peeking into phones that belong to sons of politicians?" he replied. Her frown deepened. He shrugged. "It's my business to know who's who at school. That's the whole reason we are allowed to go."

Yada had nothing to say to that, partly because he was right, and the other part was because he would just figure out everything eventually anyway. She put on her earmuffs and readied her aim. Unlike his gun, hers had little kick, and she shot in as rapid succession as it allowed her. She felt her annoyance dissipate with every satisfying hole in her target. _A little to the left._ She adjusted her aim and fired off one more round.

"You okay being the honeypot?" he asked as he lowered his gun.

"Not like you to be concerned."

"Not benevolent enough to be concerned," he said with ill humor but Yada didn't believe him for a second. Oh well. "I am curious though. I like being in the know."

"To be honest, I'm not sure. I think I am." Yada considered her small .22 before putting it back and reaching for the much larger, much more impressive practice gun. "At the very least, I'm invested."

"Hn," is all he offered as Yada began to reload.

Yada was under no delusions on what her talents were; she was pretty, she faked a good smile, and when she batted her eyelashes, boys looked. She wasn't being cocky, it took a special kind of talent to understand where one's "talent" lays, and how to effectively exploit it. She had even doubled up on seduction classes before she got her assignment.

She wasn't sure, why then, was she so surprised when it was announced she had to lure in the target.

To her credit, when she first started this project, her handler told her it was only an exercise. "You're going to have to learn to pick out the weak. Out of all the ways to recruit a potential source, blackmail is the most dangerous," her handler had said. "Look for anyone who would have a vulnerability. Pick someone with too much ego, and they'll fight back. Pick someone too low in the food chain, and it's not worth the trouble."

It had been the most fun she had since Project E. On the rare occasions Megu managed to squeeze in time with her, they worked on it together, nights searching the web, chasing rumors, and sprawling the streets.

When direct searches found nothing, she turned to investigating families, and found a representative's son's mixi page filled with pretty classmates in just-shy-of-provocative angles, and Yada saw there was one mysterious account liking all the pictures, but had no name to attribute to it. After a little bit of more searching she found that yes, it was a closet account of the father and yes, a more in depth probing did reveal that there were rumors of a wandering eye for younger girls and a suspicious habit of wandering the JK sections of Akihabara.

Yada realized she liked being proactive, it beat just sitting and learning, which consisted of a lot of listening to the seedy sides of things she never wanted to know. And on her downtime her thoughts drifted to memories of the dead. Being active meant she didn't have time for either. She went to her handler with what she found, excited for what was next, the woman nodded in uptight approval.

"Next," Takaishi-san had said, "we seduce them. An affair with a highschooler is just what is needed to make him bend."

That statement fell hard in her stomach, it was like being blind sided by a truck. A truck blaring its horn the entire way there, she could have, should have seen it coming.

By then though, this had been _her_ case, she had gotten attached to it and no one was going to take it away.

"Is Megu okay with anything?" he said in between rounds.

Yada was in between mortified and annoyed at the way her face contorted to the question. Karma looked away, having found the answers in her reaction.

"It's not like it's a secret," she muttered. "But I haven't had time to see her since I got the assignment." And she didn't want to tell her. Yada made her peace what she had to do, and while the thought of being with old, married men made her skin crawl, she wasn't scared or bitter or anything like that. It was just another dirty job, like cleaning sewers or changing diapers. But with power.

She didn't want to tell Megu though, because she wasn't sure how she would react. They weren't like Chiba and Hayami, where destiny just seemed to fuse two souls together until they were barely recognizable apart; their relationship had been hard and trying, while beautiful it took a lot of work, something especially hard to do when everything was on display for anonymous men looking for conspiracies.

"So, are you making him fall in love with you or is it blackmail?" he asked.

"The latter. Sleep with him, get evidence, have him in our pocket."

"Now why," he mused as he lifted his own gun again, "Would they want a politician in their pocket? I mean, besides the obvious."

"You heard about Kanazaki's dad?" Yada's voice dropped, suddenly fearful of what was around her. Kanazaki went to a prestigious school with Yada, and both were tasked with make connections with the children of bigwigs.

"The lawyer?"

"Kanazaki told me he was becoming a politician."

Yada wasn't one of the big thinkers of Project E, she was better with manipulating people one on one for a single purpose. She had no idea what to do with what Kanazaki told her, but Karma would. She could see the wheels turning in his head.

Yada new gun, a .45, was too obnoxious for standard use and too wieldy for normal practice, the sight made Karma raised a brow. He probably thought she would dislocate shoulder just by trying it.

Yada looked ahead and said, "Kanazaki doesn't come to school anymore."

Yada fired her gun; it roared in the air and nearly tore the target practice in two. Her aim remained steady despite the immense recoil.

"Compensating for something?" he said when Hiroshi was in earshot.

Yada laughed like they had been goofing off the entire time. "When you're playing our game you have to find your kicks somewhere."

Hiroshi smiled, apparently satisfied they were just engaging in simple banter. Her handler looked less impressed. That was not new, she only had two running expressions, unimpressed and annoyed. Her lips were forever pressed in a thin line, well plucked eyebrows were constantly furrowed, and her hair was always up in a tight bun, not a single strand out of place.

"It's time," she said.

"Yes, Takaishi-san," Yada said smiling, putting her gun down.

"Don't be such a slavedriver," Hiroshi replied. "You should let your hair down a bit. Right, Yada-chan?"

Yada repressed a shiver. She hated Karma's handler, much of it because he was also Hinano's handler. They had been in the same seduction class for a long while, and at first Hinano seemed okay with her handler.

"Watanabe-san got me a puppy," Hinano told her a long time ago, eyes wide and a big grin on her face. It had set off alarm bells, but being in the presence of a blond furball with one black paw was disarming.

"I think he wants me to develop my animal skills for use. But look at him, he's so cute I can't discipline him for training." She cooed with such fondness, Yada didn't have the heart to question it. "I call him Kuro-chan."

What happened afterwards was so infamous that even as tight-lipped as Project E was, it had gotten out to the others. Yada didn't know the details, but somehow, someway, Hiroshi put Kuro-chan's life in danger. It was a game, and if Hinano was "good enough" Kuro-chan would live, and if she was too slow, it would die.

She was too slow.

Hinano was devastated, and she shouldered all the blame. "I could have…" she said at a bathroom break, "I could have… If I was just a bit better at it. Watanabe-san said it was my fault."

"He's wrong!" Yada grabbed her shoulders.

"No, Watanabe-san doesn't lie. I failed the game and that's why Kuro-chan is gone."

The next week, Hirano had a ferret around her shoulders. Her smile was stretched painfully and slightly manic.

"Watanabe-san gave him to me. His name is Kuro-chan."

"Yada," Karma said a little louder than necessary, and she broke out of that particularly horrifying memory. She had been staring at Hiroshi, who didn't look like he had taken offense. She still ducked her head.

"Come," Takaishi-san said and ushered Yada away. Far, far away, hopefully.

Last she remembered, Hinano's kurochan was a snake, she thought idly as she dressed in high heels and thigh highs. She hiked her skirt shorter, even with the cold temperatures of the night. In the car drive there she put on lipstick and eyeshadow, a little thick but she was going to put herself on display.

When they parked, Takaishi shifted to inspect her, hmm'd in her examination before unbuttoning the top two of her blouse, all without moving a muscle on her face.

"Show enough that suggests, but not enough that it looks like you're desperate," she said.

"You've done this before," Yada said glancing at her hands. Compared to Yada's governmentally paid manicures, hers were finely cut.

"I played the same role as you once."

Yada bit back a remark, it was hard to see Takaishi playing the role of a seducer. Everything about her screamed government trained, she wondered how she fooled anybody. She lacked the naturally sultriness of Bitch-sensei, in all manners of fun and adventure. If it had been with Bitch-sensei, it would have been better.

She got out of the car into the night, the chill nipped at her exposed skin. She'd like to use a scarf, but the neck was one of the unsung heroes of temptation. She checked her phone.

He would be here around then, if she were lucky. She stuck out a leg in front of the other, showing it to the world despite the goose pimples from the cold. A puff of her breath smoked in front of her. _I should be doing her homework,_ she thought glumly. But at least she had homework.

 _One of the lucky ones_ , she reminded herself as a familiar man came waltzing to her, eyes with intent, and a suit more expensive than her entire house. Yada smiled in a way that Yada never would have, a playful quirk of her lips, her eyes half lidded, smoky purple eyeshadow glittering in the neon store lights.

"Hello, I haven't seen you around here," her target said. "Join me for a walk."

"Of course," she said, sliding her arm around his.

She thought of school, she thought of Kuro-chan, she thought of the absent chair of Kurasaki'a desk, she thought of Megu in her bed- wrapped in her blankets and her hair falling to her midback. She thought of Nagisa, dead and gone, not enough of him to be buried. She thought of Kuro-sensei, encouraging her for her dreams.

 _Kuro-sensei, Kurosensei._

She thought of luck, and she leaned into her target, whispering promises.

* * *

A/N: So I'm changing the rating for M as a precautionary measure, so there is expected violence and at least the mentioning of sexual themes in later chapters.

I'm sorry it took two weeks, when I wrote this, the last POV was actually Karma's, not Yada's, but I figured it would be fun to write a guest POV, which will happen occasionally. So I had to rewrite the entire thing, and then for some reason I lost that part of the chapter but kept my Karma draft, so I had to rewrite the entire thing and for the love of all that was good, couldn't remember how I finished it off. Then I got my hands on Overwatch for a short while and I was distracted.

Terminology to note:

mixi is the Japanese equivalent of facebook but I have no idea how it works, so I'm just going to assume it is like facebook.

The guns I mentioned, they are specifically sigwhatitsname, they are actually standard issue in Japan for I think police, I forget.

Akihabara is a district in Tokyo famous for being the anime/nerd hub. The section I mention, JK sections is shortened from- joshi kosei, which is a section that sort of...sells highschool girls to older men, cafes where they can talk to them, have "walks" with them, etc. It's been accused of having a heavy undercurrent of teenage prostitution.

I realized late that I actually use handler incorrectly, handler's apparently are suppose to be men that work with agents- which are people embedded in a foreign organization for the home organization. Or something like that. But too late.

 **Thank you to all that reviewed/followed/favorited! It's much appreciated.**

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Thank you for your reviews, being able to read it indepth really does help me! So yeah, I think one of the most fun things to write in the story is the disconnect, especially in this chapter, everyone goes around pretending that is completely normal for a teen kid to seduce people, but as readers it's meant to horrify.

Karma is fun to write because when it comes to Okuda especially, he has shades of "unreliable narrator," he thinks he's completely unattached to it all because he has to believe it. It doesn't mean it's true.

I would have to say, the most inconsistent thing about this universe is how I keep all the characters separate. There are ways around it, like Megu and Yada, but it can be difficult. Chiba and Hayami would have much more time together though, because a They have similar sniper training and b Like you they are completely and totally my otp and if I did not write them together I would probably cry.

 **Crazy rabbit2:** Oh that was one of my favorite scenes, I'm glad you like it! Watching Karma sweat under pressure is a thing that needs to happen more.

 **Dis-Appearing Writer:** Thank you for reviewing. I'm hoping the plot will develop nicely, so I hope it stays entertaining.


	4. Chapter 3: A Time To Press Forward

Chapter 3:  
"A Time to Press Forward"

Kayano didn't get nightmares. She waited for them, expected them everytime she closed her eyes, but they never came. In the beginning, she had simply wrote it off as a symptom of the tentacles, the searing pain that squeezed and tore and burned, like scathing barbed wire dragging across her organs. It was so thorough that she didn't have time to imagine Aguri's shattered body weeping blood on the dirty floor.

But after Kurosensei and Nag… after those two left her, there was still nothing.

When she did dream, it was of the mundane, like life just went on and the people she loved were still here. She dreamt of shopping with Aguri ( _not another one of those shirts. Aguri, I'm seriously thinking about burning down your wardrobe and designating myself your personal shopper)_ or sitting at her desk, tapping her pencil against her chin, half paying attention to Kurosensei's lectures ( _Kurosensei, why do we even need to learn this, why don't we learn something with practical use. Like baking cupcakes!)_.

Then she'd wake up and the quiet revelation of, _oh_ , they aren't here anymore.

Those days her apartment seemed emptier.

On days like today, when she woke up from dreams of sitting with blue haired and blue eyed boys, it solidified her resolve. She would do what needed to be done and choke down every doubt that prickled her, like swallowing broken glass.

Wigs wouldn't do this time so she dyed her hair, the Yukimura black hidden under waves of sandy brown. She penciled in freckles, blushed her cheeks, and she was no longer Kayano.

As Saki, she fluttered her eyes at good looking boys, her smile held transparent eagerness and she was prone to idol worship. Kayano liked her Saki, she liked how young and innocent she was, and she wondered if in another world, she would give the same looks of longing to her own crush. _Someone like…_

She shouldn't think like that. Saki never knew him.

She should eat; she had skipped breakfast with prejudice. And dinner and the lunch the day before, but she didn't think she could stomach anything right now. She just wanted to get done what needed to be done, find Ritsu, and be one step closer to finally being a murderer.

She gathered her hair in a high ponytail, her hair wasn't as frizzy as her normal wig, but she could hide that if she braided it.

She glanced at the time, neon numbers blinking their warning above the microwave. She left immediately, there wasn't much time if she wanted to get there by lunch. It had been a bad idea to leave so late, she could maneuver her way blind to Kunugigaoka High, but the real risk was people seeing her wander around midday in her uniform. The esteem of the school made her presence conspicuous, but it was just cold enough to justify a winter coat to hide it.

She was forever thankful Kunugigaoka was located next to mountains. It made scaling undetected to an unused classroom a lot easier. She swung her legs through the window, mindful of her schoolbag.

Itona had given her a program on a usb that he said would root out any potential AI from the chairman's computer. Takebayashi hadn't been wrong when he said Itona knew nothing about cracking, but it was precisely because Itona worked with robotics he had good relationships with people that worked in computer engineering.

 _"Did I cause trouble for you?" Kayano asked._

 _"Yes." Itona still had the social grace of a potato. "But it's fine as long as you get Ritsu back."_

 _"Thank you," Kayano said. Then bit her lip, "One more thing-"_

"There you are," said Asano.

Kayano-Saki turned to him, adoring eyes shined despite Asano's peculiar scrutiny. She did her best to ignore how the hair on the back of her neck started to rise.

 _Damnit, Karma is too effective._

She knew that his sudden interest in Saki had more to do with what looked like the sudden friendship between her and Karma, which meant he was more suspicious of her than his usual crowd. She had hoped to slip in and out of his memory, just another notch on his belt, she hated being watched. But what was done was done, after this day she would discard Saki anyway.

He looked at her up and down and his attention was overpowering. Kayano did her best to fidget like a child, blushing under his gaze and twirling the end of her braid between her fingers. She sort of understood why all manner of girls and guys tripped themselves over him, he was beautiful in a devastatingly piercing way. She didn't like it.

"You look different."

 _Fuck_. She had forgotten how perceptive he could be. Had he ever been formally trained, he would have been dangerous.

Then his lips quirked in a smirk. "It's better." And she mentally uncoiled her shoulders in relief.

"Oh Asano-kun." _Flutter those damn eyelashes like you meant it_.

He had grabbed her hand forcefully, but not enough to put her off, intertwined their fingers, and looked at her full of intent. She hoped he didn't feel the callouses on her hands. "Let's go somewhere quieter."

Here it was.

The march to Chairman Asano's office was quiet, but she welcomed it. Kunugigaoka High was unnaturally clean, the hallways were large, and the floors were so polished she could see their blurry reflection under their feet. Echoes of students bounced off the walls and the squeaks of shoes resounded. It felt alive.

Chairman's Asano's office gave of an air of unwelcomeness, the doors were large and dead bolted. But if one was trained well enough they could see there was more to it than that, the windows couldn't be pried opened and were too thick to smash. The lock was so complicated that it couldn't be picked by anything less than an expert. The doors were too solid to simply force open. It hadn't been like that when she first visited as Kayano Kaede, and there was absolutely no reason for a school administrator's office to be so well guarded.

Unless there was something worth guarding.

Kayano licked her lips. Saki turned her eyes on Asano.

Like father, like son, the office was meant to show power. She didn't have to pretend to be in awe at the room, it already inspired admiration. Truthfully, it was ridiculous just how much went into a room meant for a principal, the room was large, high ceilings and richly painted walls, mahogany floors buffed to a shine, and a grand desk double the size of her mattress.

It was a room meant to convey a message: I am above you.

Hell, it was entire family of melodramatic egomaniacs.

Her Saki cooed in wonder, her head spinning as if she was taking it all in, and then 'accidentally' knocked into the display with all his father's trophies. They clattered and banged on the floor.

"Oh my gosh, I'm sooo sorry," she squeaked as she backed away. "I just, I wasn't paying attention and-"

Asano condescendingly patted her on the head. "You're kind of stupid aren't you?"

Her jaw twitched, but she managed a sheepish laugh. Neither Kayano nor Akari ever had a self-esteem low enough that she found slight insults attractive. Saki would though, the hot and cold would work on her because she was desperate for attention.

He turned his back to her to pick up the mess she made as she walked toward the desk. His computer was on, _good_ ; she slipped the usb drive in and prayed it would work.

When she turned back, Asano was at her. He slammed his hands down on either side of her, trapping her between him and the desk. She let herself turn red at the proximity, he was glaring, not sure what to make of her.

The attention was intense, he laid it on so thick it was almost physically suffocating, she could see the wheels turning in his head. She knew he was measuring her up, trying to see what Karma saw, but she faked naivety with the quivering of her lips, with an absolute belief that he was interested in her.

He loomed in, searching, and when he found nothing, he smirked. Like an asshole.

 _Too many people in my life like this guy_.

And he closed the gap.

Kayano had been kissed before, she's done it while acting, and she's been kissed by someone she was loved. But she never was use to it, and she violently hated how being kissed made her feel like a little girl.

Her face was heating up as he tilted her chin and she could taste him.

This was weird… and a little sad… and surprisingly addictive. Because Kayano was reminded, again, that Asano was always a prodigy. It would make sense that he also was brilliant at this in particular.

Maybe she had been too confident, because the way his fingers trailed up her arms blazed hot, but made her shiver like she was cold. This was a blindspot for her, she had simply assumed she could make it, but here, she was drifting without an anchor against him.

She did her best to twist her hands in his uniform in an attempt to anchor her thoughts, but it didn't help. She closed her eyes hoping it would make it better, but it wasn't better because it let her imagination take full reign, and when he left her mouth to trail the softness of her neck, her breaths came heavy.

She felt like this before, once, she thought. But she tried to push that away too, as fingers tightened around her upper thigh.

 _Play the part, don't let it play you._ She ran her hands through his soft hair as his own grip trailed up her leg, fingernails lazily scratching her skin, and she took a breath and exhaled his name-

* * *

Karma didn't care if it garnered unwanted attention, he laughed so loud he thought he was going to fall off the chair. And Karma rarely did anything but smirk derisively.

Kayano pouted. "You want to be any louder? I don't think heard you down at _Project E_. Why the hell did I even tell you?"

They were sitting in the classroom, school had ended twenty minutes ago and Karma pulled clean up duty when Kayano approached him, head hung in shame. It only got better from there.

"So, let me get this straight. So in the midst of seducing him-"

"Ugh, please don't say it that way."

"So in the middle of screwing him."

"I wasn't screwing him, stop. You sound like Okajima."

Karma continued. "So in the middle of not-seducing him, and not-screwing him, you called him Nagisa."

Kayano groaned as she faceplanted, her now brown hair spilling out over her shoulders. "I'm so fucked. I messed up, and I think Asano found the usb. This isn't a joke."

"If this isn't funny, then nothing is." Karma went in not really sure what the outcome of Kayano's little plan would be, but now he was happy he participated; this was the closest thing to entertainment this school had provided since he got here. The mental image alone was worth it, he could almost picture Asano, the monument to self importance and pride, standing there wondering what the hell was going on.

"And then you panicked and ran out there without explanation, leaving him completely confused and half turned on."

Kayano ground out a sound into her hands that was full of hatred, both directed at him and herself.

Karma took the opportunity to rub it in. "There were at least a dozen ways you could have played it off and it would have turned out fine."

"I know."

"You could have even said nothing, grabbed the usb and ran."

"I know!"

"You did the worst thing an amateur could do. You panicked and made yourself even more conspicuous."

" **I know!"** Kayano threw her hands in the air. She posed like that for a second, before slumping back down in the chair, utterly defeated. "I couldn't help it. It was the first time I said his name since…"

The air changed, and Karma stiffened as the humor was sucked out like a vacuum pulling in air. He let his smile loiter on his face but he felt his walls construct in front of him.

He didn't know why Kayano continued to use Nagisa's name as a memorial, laying all her emotional damage and personal value at its feet as an act of repentance. Karma had a degree of respect for her, but only so far as abilities go, her yearning to submerge herself in tragedy was something that he thought, quite frankly, was asinine.

They were killed. Kurosensei blasted away by his own student, Yukimura-sensei's name faded in obscurity, and Nagisa was a stained mess on the grass of a mountain. They all died in vain. A year ago he would have cried, but he moved on. He had no interest in being like Kayano, some kind of martyr for the past. He didn't want to see it.

Karma felt a buzz in the back of a head, something stronger than white noise but not quite the beginnings of a headache.

"Well then," he said, his tone noticeably cooled as he leaned back into the rear legs of chair. "You didn't come to me just to provide a good story, as fun as it was. What are you here for?"

Kayano looked up, her face in ruins after her confession. The buzz rang stronger. "I need that usb, and I need him not to ask questions about who I am. And you're the only one who can get it from him."

He leaned forward again, resting his chin on laced fingers. "What makes you say that?"

"All you did is talk to me once, and that fast tracked me to his first priority. The entire time I was there, he was trying to see how you and I fit together. He's borderline obsessed."

And she had been complaining about him wording things risque. "Sounds like a pain in the ass. No thanks." There was a chill in the air ever since Kayano acted like she trudged on some sacred taboo by uttering Nagisa's name, and it was only getting colder. Whatever, that was fine. Karma liked the cold.

Kayano frowned. "You helped me out before."

"I took a second out of my time to put the spotlight on you," Karma said tilting his head in boredom. "If I do this, I not only expose myself to him, but he'll take it as some sort of sign that it's okay to nip at my heels. I'm not sure why people think I'm that charitable."

Kayano said nothing, the air got frostier. Someone must have left a window open.

"If you do this, I'll owe you one. And could possibly have Ritsu," she said with impressive control. "And Ritsu is worth any headache one clueless kid can give you."

"Hm."

That was true. Asano was a persistent bastard, and would be worse now that his pride had thoroughly been crushed and his curiosity activated. But there were things more pressing than Asano's pestering. Things like whatever Project E was doing.

"I'll do it. But I need a favor," he said finally. She folded her arms, waiting. "I need you to talk to Kanazaki."

Kayano blinked. "Kanazaki-san? Why?"

"Yada hasn't seen her in awhile. I want to know why and if it's going to come back to me eventually." Karma felt the itch return, it curled and twitched under his skin; he scratched at his arm. Something was going on, and Karma didn't know what it was. He would not suffer a mystery in his backyard lightly.

"Okay," Kayano agreed, visibly relieved. "Whatever you need, Karma."

"We have ourselves a deal."

Footsteps echoed nearing the classroom, and Kayano whipped her head towards its direction. "Got to go. I don't think I should hang around this place anymore."

"I'll have it for you by tomorrow. I get here through train, the station near-"

Kayano shook her head. "I know what station you use."

The itch returned with a vengeance. An inkling of paranoia crept in, if Kayano could trail him, he would need to be more aware of his surroundings. Perhaps change his station, patterns make for easy targets.

Before the steps neared them, Kayano opened the window and leaned off the ledge until she dropped from the second floor, out of sight. A blast of winter air fluttered the curtains just as Asano slammed the door open.

"Yo, Asano-kun, here to admire the view?"

"Cut the crap," Asano scowled, he stomped his way towards his desk, his back ramrod straight. "I saw Saki come around here. Where is she?"

"Who?" Ah, that must have been her cover name. "Oh, right. _Saki_. She's not here anymore."

Asano slammed his hand down in an unimpressive display of anger. "There's no Saki registered in our year, I just checked. Who is she Karma?"

Karma snorted, shaking his head. "I'd give you an answer but it would just waste my time. You wouldn't understand if I told you."

Asano was fury and brimstone now, and he tossed out the usb Kayano must have been talking about. "And what is this? I tried to access its contents and it nothing works."

"Nothing works _for you_ , anyway."

"This is my school Karma," Asano leaned in, lips downturned and eyes narrowed. "I have the right to know."

"Please, I don't care what you think you have the 'right' to know, but you…" he twirled a circle with his finger, "and this entire school are the same. We're not on the same level. You don't even know what you're asking for."

"I know you want this," he hissed, jabbing a finger to the usb like it was personally offending him.

"Not as much as you think," Karma said stretching his arms behind his head. "And not as much as you want to be in the know."

"I could bring this straight to my father."

Karma laughed. "You? Run to your daddy because your feelings were hurt? You're more of a loser than I thought."

Asano's face contorted, pride in shambles, humiliated and thirsty for any sort of bone Karma could throw.

This is why Hiroshi forced him back into this godforsaken school, to learn how to work people. Well, he was getting his worth out of it now. Karma smiled like the devil.

"But if you do give it me, I can point you to the right direction."

"Fuck off, Karma. I want nothing short of answers."

"No you don't, because you and me, we're similar in a way," he said, and Asano tempered a bit at the comparison. Destroy the ego and rebuild it in a way that works for him. "There's no point in an easy win. You want the challenge. And if you can actually figure out what's really going on here, you might actually be worthy of knowing." Karma shrugged his shoulders. "Or you can do nothing, throw a tantrum and sit on that usb that will give you absolutely nothing, because there's nobody in your entire circle that could ever come close to cracking it."

The wind blew again, and despite himself, Asano shivered at its chill. Asano glanced at the open window with a frown, and when looked back to Karma, he knew he won.

Asano turned the chair from the desk infront on its legs and sat down, eye to eye. He didn't break contact when he pushed the usb to Karma's fingers. "What can you tell me?"

"Why do you think Class E was moved?"

Asano shifted in impatience. "The terrorist attack? Everybody knows about that, give me something new."

"Really Asano?" Karma lowered his voice so that Asano had to incline closer to even hear. "What kind of terrorist attacks a shack on the side of a mountain? How does that make any sense?"

He watched as Asano processed the information, rubbing his hand over his mouth. Karma got up and put on his gray coat in the silence.

"Why would they lie," Asano glared accusingly when Karma looped his scarf around his neck. "There's no reason for them to say there was a terrorist attack if there wasn't."

"There's always a reason to lie." He gathered his school bag. "Everyone lies. The news does, I do. Even your father." And he walked away, usb firmly in his coat pocket.

The trail of breadcrumbs could bite him in the ass. If Project E found out he was talking, the repercussions would be immense. They didn't take leaks lightly. But if Karma was careful enough he could lead Asano around and he still would never find anything worth worrying about.

And in the best case scenario, he could be an asset Karma could use.

School was becoming for fun after all.

* * *

In the bustle of the early morning, Karma said nothing to Kayano, but the brief glance showed confidence.

Kayano felt the world lift off her shoulders, and it was like she was breathing normally for the first time in hours. They got on the same train together and he made his way next to her, pushing through the crowd and careful not to make any sort of eye contact.

Perhaps he was being watched here, or he was cautious because working with her made him more nervous. When the train jolted and he inconspicuously bumped into her, dropping the usb in the pocket of her pea coat. She flipped her phone up and pretended to text.

"Thank you," she typed on the screen, Karma glanced at it, and looked away smirking, like Karma always does.

Karma's a cocky bastard, but he was as good as he thought he was.

Kayano got off at the next station, a ways from her own apartment, but she wouldn't be greedy. If Karma was being extra cautious, so should she.

 _So close_. If Ritsu was really in there, she had a new weapon.

 _And a friend_ , her Kayano side said in her head. _And a weapon_ , Akari repeated. _And a betrayal._ Saki mourned.

A sudden wash of vertigo bubbled in her, she gripped the side of a building and waited for the lightheadedness to pass. She blinked once, twice, took a deep breath and let her world reorient.

Vertigo came and went whenever the voices of all her names conflicted, and as of late they were coming with increasing frequency.

 _Maybe I'm going crazy._ She pushed off the building. _No, I'm fine. I'm normal._ It'll be better soon. Once Yanagisawa was dead.

The thought drove her home faster, she was confident enough that no one was following her. She ignored the curious glances of onlookers and she jogged down the street, and she reminded herself that her obvious behavior completely contradicted the reason she stealthed home in the first place. She didn't care, and didn't slow down until she arrived at her apartment.

Her hands were shaking slightly when she put the key in the doorknob, she was anxious to see if she really had found Ritsu. Despite her desperation, she stood quietly in the doorway.

She had a ritual, quiet for five minutes, check for any signs of entry, memorize her own patterns to see if there were any disturbances in the dust that were not hers. On her more paranoid of days she would put down baby powder, so that if an intruder came in he would leave footprints.

There never was anybody, and that remained true today.

 _Safe_.

She kept messing up lately, the mistakes piled up on her chest and pressed; it always felt hard to breath. But for now she was still secure, and that meant pressing forward.

Kayano pulled out her laptop, the same one she had spirited away two years ago when- _Aguri laid on the floor, holes in her stomach, crumbling rubble made pebbles that filled her wounds, mixing gray and red_. The screen was cracked and it whined when it booted up but it hadn't failed her yet, and she slid in the usb and prayed.

Nothing.

Panic and frustration built up in her, she was shaking again. She exhaled, the sound shuddered in the silence.

 _Just give it time,_ she didn't know what happened to Ritsu at the chairman's office. She always viewed Ritsu less of a computer program and more of a person; she smiled and dreamed and cried, so maybe now she was still recovering like a normal girl would be.

First Kayano should get this dye out of her hair.

She turned the shower as hot as she could withstand and let the water pelt her skin red and raw. She scrubbed her scalp as hard as she could, until her fingernails threatened to draw blood. She wanted the Yukimura black back. She watched as the remnants of Saki dribbled out of her hair and down her body, swirls of sand brown and dirt stained her shower floor, and felt satisfied.

She stepped out and wrapped a towel around her body as the coldness of the day clashed with the heat still rising from her skin. Her hair clung to her face, dripping waterfalls but she paid it no mind, instead running back to check on her laptop.

 _Nothing._

She bent her head down in defeat.

Then-

"…Itona?" a muffled sound whispered from cheap speakers. Kayano whipped her head up, her eyes widening. "Is that you Itona?"

She did not see the purple haired girl she had met years ago, but it was her voice.

"No it's me," Kayano said, her voiced cracked.

"Is anyone there?" And Kayano remembered this computer had neither a mic nor webcam. She had put Ritsu in a decrepit body where she was deaf and blind. She sat in a stupor before quickly opening up notepad.

"It's me, Kaede Kayano," she wrote. The disembodied voice stopped crackling over the speakers and there was no reply, perhaps she should have written Akari instead.

Then words began to type itself below hers: "Kayano! I thought I felt Itona in the program that was calling me. Are you okay? How is everyone?"

Relief came, and it was almost exhausting as the disappointment, but with a sweeter taste.

"We're separated, Itona gave me this to find you. Are you okay?"

Ritsu wrote, "Separated? Separated how?" And immediately followed up with, "I am operating at less than optimal capacity. This device is outdated and is not able to run my program for extended amounts of time before hardware issues start to present. However I am in no immediate danger but I do recommend placing me in a device with processing power more suitable for my functions."

"I'll… try. I think. What happened to you?"

"Part of my routine maintenance requires that I regularly created backups in case of emergency. I am at my most vulnerable during system maintenance and someone must have redirected me to perform a backup on another hardrive without my operators being aware. Unfortunately as I am only backup, my performance is hindered and some of my functionality is lost. Recommend interfacing me with the original program."

She didn't know.

"Ritsu, your original body," is body the right word? Original program? "Was shut down."

Nothing happened for so long, she feared for a second that Ritsu's program crashed.

"I'm dead?"

The question was like nails across chalkboard, and uncomfortable realization came to Kayano that she might have dragged Ritsu into a stunted body when it would have been more merciful to just let her be. She had no understanding of computers and Ritsu, and no idea what she might feel like knowing her main self was taken down and forgotten. If she was an earlier backup, Kayano didn't know just how aware Ritsu was of the situation. If she knew about how Kurosensei died, or about _him_ , if she knew just that the entire class turned their backs on the spirit that Kurosensei painstakingly cultivated.

But the regrets came too late, she was here now, alive, and a sudden fierceness took over Kayano.

"No, you're not dead. We're alive, Ritsu." She spoke as she was typing, as if it would help drive the words into her. "Bad things happened, a lot of them, but we're still standing, you and me. And that means we go forward. You're not just a backup now. You are Ritsu."

"I'm not dead," the letters typed slowly. Then repeated quickly, "I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I'm not dead.

"I am Ritsu."

"Ritsu, did the chairman ever use you?"

"No, even when my program was inactive I still retained enough intelligent capacity to reject intrusions and demands from undesirable third parties. He attempted. I refused."

"But you came for this usb?"

"Yes. I recognized some of Itona's handiwork so I complied… And Chairman Asano is a jerk."

She couldn't help a short, wet laugh at that; it somehow felt very Ritsu.

She wasn't alone anymore. There was a warmth there that helped drive away some of the sickness in her head and the burning in her back. But first things first, she needed to repay debts.

"Ritsu, remember when I said everyone was separated? I need your help."

"Of course, Kayano-san. Always."

"I need you to find Kanazaki."

* * *

AN: I have this thing about having certain characters interact more than they did in the original manga. Kayano and Karma is one of them, but with so many characters it's understandable that there wasn't time. But that's what fanfiction is for I guess.

I've slowed down on writing this, but the good news is that I'm about 50,000 words (and just finished with the first arcish?) in so there's plenty there.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** I wish I had more time to flesh out Hinano's puppy story because it's so mentally screwed up that it was a lot of fun to write, and I have no idea if that means I'm a kind of sociopath. Probably all writers are a little. Yeah, Kayano isn't as stable as she likes to think she is, and it kind of conveys in this story. Then again no one is as stable as they like to think they are.

Yangisawa is so easy to write because he's so irredeemably horrible. It harkens back to the mangaka's previous work, Neuro, where he wrote the villain as this pure monster with no hope of redemption, because he was tired of shounen villains with sad pasts. He's great at making these characters that are meant to be despised through and through.

 **Crazy rabbit2:** Thank you for your review! I'm glad the creepiness of Yanagisawa and Hinano's predicament came through. Though Yanagisawa is a character that already exudes creepiness.

Thank you to all that favorited+followed.


	5. Chapter 4: A Time to Heal

Chapter 4: "A Time to Heal"

The solution to Kanazaki's whereabouts was all very anticlimactic. Perhaps because it was a favor asked by Karma, or she was a member of Project End, but Kayano had expected something dramatic, a mysterious plot to unravel, a dangerous exotic location, and an explosion or two.

Ritsu hummed as she worked the computer for more than it was worth. Kayano had bought a superior computer that allowed for better speed and microphone options, but as much as it helped, it also pronounced just how restricted Ritsu had become. She was faceless, no longer able to project herself as the young girl that Kayano remembered behind the screen. Her voice was similar, but it came with cracks and her pronunciation was odd, like she was using an auto translator rather than speaking a language she was fluent in. She was slower, more cautious, and couldn't be pushed as far as she used to be.

"I've reviewed the Kanazaki family's expenditures for the past year and there are a steady number of charges that have popped up in Shikoku province for the past two months. However, Mr. Kanazaki himself has been actively working in Tokyo but there have been no complaints filed with his bank, so it is unlikely that someone stole his account information."

"Shikoku?" Kayano crossed her arms. She had been to the countryside before on some film shoots, she couldn't possibly see why Kanazaki or Project E would send her there. Not unless they were suddenly doing spy work on lonely farms and old fruit trees. "Any idea what she might be doing?"

"From some of the payments I can draw a reasonable conclusion. But if my hypothesis is correct, I do not feel as if I have the authority to reveal private matters. If you want to know, you have to ask her yourself."

Kayano was taken somewhat aback by the stonewalling of her words. She let it go though, because from her wording it hadn't sounded important, and the use of "private matters" meant she hadn't gone there on official business.

"Can you find me a way to her?" Kayano asked and this time Ritsu sounded more open.

"Yes, would you like to go by flight, bullet train, or bus?"

"Bus," Kayano said, wincing as Ritsu pulled up browsers with pricing options. The flights and bullet trains were the fastest, but they were expensive. Kayano didn't lack in funding, she had reserves from the years she was a child actress, but she didn't want to be blazen about it. Between renting an apartment building, her absentee parents and their spending habits, and buying computers suitable for high end AI programs, she would have to be careful to spread it for as long as she needed to.

-x-

Nine hours in, Kayano was regretting her decision.

Spying was mostly a game of patience; you wait, you watch, you wait some more, and you hope nobody has caught on to you. She had learned this even as early as the days of Kurosensei, spending excruciating hours sitting and observing as doubts grew and the tentacles drew teeth on her nerves and roared her body with pain. Kayano knew how to wait.

It didn't make it any less vexing.

Her cellphone jingled and even though she knew what it read she flipped it open to view it anyway. Since the day she revived her, Ritsu frequently sent her texts, always with the same words;

"I'm not dead."

She had sent her close to forty in the last day. Kayano wasn't sure if she should be alarmed or relieved, but regardless she read every single one of them. There was an odd sense of duty in this, like she must bear witness to Ritsu's declarations.

Another ring and this time Ritsu's message read: "You are almost at the station." And another with a list of directions. As if on cue, the bus announced its stop and Kayano piled off.

Shikoku was nothing if not beautiful, even in the winter. When she was standing on the deck of the ferry looking towards the horizon, the ocean was so expansive and so blue she thought it would be okay if it swallowed up the whole world, and when she looked out of the windows of the bus, the sky unfolded generously forever.

And it was quiet. Very quiet, no honking horns or loud chatter or advertisements blaring for attention. The roads were not Tokyo roads, they were smaller, thinner, less well kept, and stretched out leisurely without a particular destination. There was no bustle of people on the streets, the elderly chatted without a care, the younger kids skipped rocks on the water; it seemed mostly devoid of one particular generation- the young but working able ran to the cities for opportunities and hopeless dreams.

This was what peace must be like, rice fields and the caw of the birds flying south for the winter. It was so unfathomably untainted that Kayano didn't want to stay here, Shikoku didn't know the greys of Tokyo fog, it didn't know the weeping children left in the wake of death, didn't know the conspiracies of Project E. It was as if everything stopped on their shores.

Kayano's feet began to ache as she continued walking towards her destination. It also didn't know about reliable public transportation. In Tokyo there was walking everywhere, but in Shikoku, time slowed and space stretched, and it took forever to get to one place from another.

"Here," Ritsu's text message pinged. Kayano gave a wry smile.

 _Of course._

She entered the small center, not quite a mall, but still probably the closest thing to a hub this backwards town had. Half the stores were closed, and in the others the employees were tired, friendly individuals, all leaning back and enjoying the nothingness.

Kanazaki was easy to spot; in the overwhelming ruralness of the atmosphere, Kanazaki screamed Tokyo. Her inky black hair fell down past her back like calligraphy, her clothes were too modern and sleek for the laziness of the country, and she had an air of money that was foreign for this area.

"Is this game any fun?" Kayano asked with nonchalant friendliness. Because of course she would find Kanazaki in the arcade, even hours and hours away from home.

Kanazaki's eyes widened for a fraction of a second, shock visibly crossed her face, but she then slid back to her normal refined stance, hands properly folded in front of her.

"It doesn't really matter if it is," she replied smoothly, a polite smile on her face. "There's no other arcade on this island for miles. But I do know of a nice daifuku store here, if you're interested. I've been craving it, lately."

Kayano broke out in a genuine smile. "I'd appreciate it, I'm new around here."

"Obviously."

Without missing a beat Kanazaki threaded her arms around Kayano's and they walked like unassuming highschool girls and not the trained assassins they were.

"I didn't think you'd be the first one to seek me out," Kanazaki admitted as she walked at a relaxed pace.

"Karma asked me," Kayano replied.

Kanazaki looked at her in mild surprise. "Did he say why?"

"Just that he didn't know what was going on and he wanted to."

"That sounds more like him. Always has to have his head over the water," Kanazaki sounded distant. Kayano frowned at their location, peering both ways at the emptiness of the town.

"I know," Kanazaki said to her apprehension. "There's so little to hide behind here. No crowds to get lost in, no buildings to duck into. We're exposed, but at the same time we can see them coming a mile away."

The small store was rundown, but in an inviting sort of way, old wood counters and glass hiding colors and colors of sweet buns; a homely looking man with a kind face jumped up from the chair. "Ah, Kanazaki-chan, who is this? A friend?"

"An old classmate, yes. Akane-chan came to visit me all the way from Tokyo. Two strawberry filled please, ojisan. I want her to taste the best daifuku in the country."

The man chuckled in affection as horror flooded Kayano, Kanazaki just _offered_ information about her in the open, that she had been a classmate from Tokyo, fake name or no. She violently suppressed the urge to bolt as her flight senses kicked in, and Kanazaki must have felt her tense because she tightened her arms and kept her glued her side.

"Thank you," she bowed politely and offered one to Kayano, but her mouth felt like dust and she was still feeling the panic pump against her chest.

She held the bun in her palms as they walked away, Kanazaki's hold slackened. "I know it takes a while to get used to, but this isn't Tokyo. This island is small, everyone knows everyone else, and they can smell a stranger as soon as they step on the streets. It's easier work with a little bit of friendliness instead of trying to remain invisible. Eat up _Akane-chan_ , I wasn't lying about it being the best in Japan."

Kayano took a reluctant bite, and she couldn't help but melt a little, sweets were a comfort food, and that was true across all names. She wanted to ask who Akane was, Kayano didn't take new names lightly, and her obsessive compulsive need to know exactly who she was and what her habits were flared. She chewed to the point of grinding her teeth to repress the request.

Kanazaki continued after a polite swallow. "Even in this town though, I try to keep near this area; it's well known to be a hangout for teenagers. You could be surrounded by spies and be none the wiser, but middle aged man hanging out in a game arcade always draws attention."

"…True." There was a comfort in knowing that even in a place like this, in all its calm hum and the passive tempo of life, Kanazaki was on guard and thinking. It reminded Kayano that she wasn't the only one that couldn't feel in sync with the thought of peace, that she wasn't quite crazy. Or if she was, she was crazy in familiar company. It also explained how Ritsu found Kanazaki, if she spent money here on a regular basis then it would be easy to track her.

Kanazaki was now walking her down a lonely road, past the arcades and buildings to somewhere more secluded where they couldn't be overheard.

"Why did you come here?" Kayano spoke into her daifuku. If Kanazaki was still looking over her shoulder for spies, she obviously didn't come here to relax, and there was nothing here that would be of interest to anyone, much less her or Project E. "I find it hard to believe that they would just let you go."

The clouds crawled in the sky.

"I'm pregnant," Kanazaki said simply.

Kayano nearly fell on her face.

"Wh… did- what?! Was it…" Kayano bumbled, turning pink and running her hand through her hair. "How?" she finally wheezed out.

"I really hope I don't have to explain to you how babies are made, Akane-chan."

"Does Sugi- Was this a Project E mission?"

"No," Kanazaki said sharply, probably more than she had intended. She shook her head again and continued on calmer. "It wasn't because of them. Well, not in the way you're probably thinking. It's Sugino's." Kanazaki's face softened when she said his name.

Sugino, Kayano remembered, was sweet and full of energy, and more than anyone he charged ahead without fully considering the consequences, not like he was incredibly irresponsible, but in a way she supposed kids their age were supposed to. She had always appreciated his straightforward simpleness, and if she had to guess, that's what won Kanazaki over.

But Kanazaki was another matter; Kanazaki did not make these mistakes, not anymore. She weighed her words like they were worth gold, the thoughts behind all of her actions were twice as expensive, and her smiles- even when genuine- were by design. Kanazaki was careful and pregnancy was one hell of a slip up.

"You did it on purpose."

Her friend looked down, long lashes hid a sad shine in her eyes. "My father has become active in the Democratic Party."

Kayano never considered herself stupid, but she didn't follow politics. She had a lot more to worry about. "I don't get how it's connected. And I thought your dad was a lawyer."

"He was, it's not unusual for people from law backgrounds to turn to politics, but it is for him." Her hand fell to her side, daifuku forgotten. "I know this doesn't mean much to you, you've been dealing with your own demons, but Karma has probably been getting suspicious. Lately Project E has shifted from training to field operations, and much of them have to do with dealing with members of the Diet."

"You think they're going to... control the government?" What an absolute bizarre thought.

Kanazaki laughed. "No nothing like that. They'd have to compete with a lot more than just a few shady politicians. But it's a definite power play, and they're using my father for it."

"You think he actually has a chance to get elected?" Kayano asked. "I've seen your dad. I wouldn't invite him to dinner much less help run my country."

Kanazaki smile went sour at the veracity of the statement. "That's true, but he has the probability on being on the party list, so he could get into office without being directly elected."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I was making sure it happened. As soon as we switched to actual operations, they had me working my father. They want me to engineer him into a puppet." The black haired girl's face set in steeled determination, her eyes narrowing into the distance. "And I will not."

Kanazaki's rebellion against her father was legendary to her classmates, and not just because it was seemingly out of character for her. She rarely spoke of him, but having seen the man in passing when he came to school and watching Kanazaki respond to him, stiff and short, she knew there was little warmth between them.

Kayano knew why should go to such extreme lengths to get out of that situation. The awkward silences and heavy history that led to her quiet revolts wouldn't allow her to work with or against her father. It was the one line that she wouldn't cross.

"So you got pregnant," Kayano finished.

"It would be an embarrassment for a politician's teenage daughter, much less a new politician, to be pregnant. They shipped me here out of sight, where there isn't much information coming or going. Project E was angry and they know this was in direct defiance of their orders, but even they wouldn't work over a pregnant girl."

"And Sugino…"

Kanazaki always smiled. It was her armor, her weapon, and her own self image. Kanzaki was not smiling anymore.

Rather than answer she asked, "And what are you doing?"

Kayano blinked at the suddenness of the question. "Karma asked me to-"

"Not Karma. You. I know what Karma wants, but what have you been up to?" Kanazaki stopped in the middle of the road, and Kayano looked away, further up could see that it would split, one side turned to gravel and the other into dirt, lined by ricefields. Shikoku was so quaint it made Kanazaki even more conspicuously beautiful, standing in its frame. "I told you everything about me. It's your turn."

"Nothing has changed."

This wasn't the right answer because Kanazaki's lips pressed together in a tight line. "Are you still looking for revenge?"

Defensiveness prickled up. "Yanagisawa took everything from me, why shouldn't I try?"

"What are you planning to do?"

"I don't know yet," Kayano confessed. "I've been running multiple leads but for someone so blindingly dim-witted, he doesn't have a lot of holes." Kayano gritted her teeth, just talking about him got her angry. "You want to know why, fine, I do want to kill him, that much is clear, but I want him to feel it first. I want to tear down what he has built and make him sleep on its rubble. I want him to watch everything he loves get torn away. I want him to eat his pride and choke on it. I want him to be completely useless, unable to move or blink on his own- forced to live off the passing kindness of strangers. Then I want him to die a dog's death. And I've been working on that ever sense I left you guys that day."

"So your goal is "do something" and over the past year you have done nothing. Well done."

"What is your problem?" her hackles raised, she hadn't expected this sass from Kanazaki. Maybe Karma, but not Kanazaki, who was at minimum, respectful, but also who she widely regarded one of her best friends. "This is what I've chosen, and I have poured blood, sweat, and tears for this. I _crawled_ my way out of hell only to _crawl_ my way into another, and it is my decision. I got _engaged_ to him for this, so don't act as if I'm not trying."

Kanazaki took a breath. "What? You got engaged?"

"Please, you're pregnant."

"With someone I love and trust. Yanagisawa is the reason your sister is gone, Kurosensei is gone, Nagisa," And Kayano flinched so hard at Nagisa's name she might as well have been hit, "What are you planning to accomplish? You know there is no way he believes you."

"I know that. But he doesn't know I know. Let him think he is on to me, and that makes it easier."

Kanazaki pinched the bridge of her nose. "This sounds ridiculous you know. It's too complicated, it will eventually ruin you."

"I _know_ what I'm doing. You don't have the right to-"

The conversation abruptly stopped at the sound of Kanazaki's palm slapping Kayano across the face. It wasn't hard, but she was so shocked that she really did fall down this time, slack jawed and all protesting dissipating from her tongue. Her daifuku rolled in the dirt.

"I don't have the right?" She had never looked so un-Kanazaki right now. Venerable and exasperated and so filled with disgust. "I was there too. I saw Kurosensei torn apart. I saw Nagisa bleed out in your arms." Kayano wished people would stop saying _Nagisa-Nagisa_ because it burned to hear it.

Kanazaki clenched the hand she slapped Kayano with into a fist. "Did you know what Sugino said to me when I told him I was pregnant? He cried and said he was sorry." She looked utterly heartbroken. Too devastated to even to shed tears. "Even when he knew it was my plan, he just kept saying sorry because he thinks he ruined my life. He thinks… he thinks he hurt me. You are not the only one suffering, _Kayano_."

Kayano quickly looked around to make sure no one was listening, but the road was flat and deserted and there was nowhere to hide.

"Sugino was Nagisa's best friend, and he blames himself for everything even if there was no way he was at fault. I watched someone I love, hate himself into a depression that is eating him inside out and I can't even be there for him. Rio drinks the memories away. Karma pretends that none of it matters to him. Most of our classmates throw themselves in these missions like it's the only thing that matters. You want to know why I'm here, Kayano?"

She yanked her friend up by the arm with uncharacteristic roughness. "I'm tired. I'm tired of living my life anchored to tragedy. I tired of following orders that require me to lose myself for people who don't care, I'm tired of waking up barely able to breathe through the grief. I'm tired of seeing people I care about suffer. We can't change the past, and if all this misery and sickness and loathing could make miracles then I'd endure it, but it doesn't. We just get worse."

In the distance, young kids began to filter in the distance, so Kanazaki took a step back, smoothed her clothes and smiled again, it was fresh and sophisticated as it always was.

"Akane-chan," she said in her inoffensive, reserved tone. "I'm tired of seeing the people I love hurting. I want to heal."

Kayano's phone chimed a text message. She knew what it said.

 _"I'm not dead."_

* * *

Despite all the advice, that bastard Hiroshi would never stopped smiling.

Karma shifted in his chair. "I have a certain amount of pity for your wife."

"Oh?" Hiroshi hummed staring at his playing cards. He placed one down and drew another.

"But not too much. I mean, she willingly chose to marry you," Karma lazily dropped his cards. "Full house."

"Four of a kind."

"It's impossible for you to have four tens in your deck. You cheated."

Hiroshi gathered the deck, amused. "You know counting cards is illegal, Karma-kun."

"So is training kids to be assassinations. But here we are." Karma let out a deliberate yawn. "Shouldn't we be training or something?"

"Bah, we're bonding as handler and brat. And you learn so much more about a person by playing games rather than of talking. For example." Hiroshi leaned in. "I never once hinted that there were any stakes in this game and you still went through to trouble to count cards. You, Karma, never gamble."

Karma didn't take the bait. "You're just being lazy."

Hiroshi reclined, shrugging his shoulders. "True. And I still get paid regardless." He began to meticulously shuffle the deck, the cards slid expertly among his fingers. "Your other problem is that you're not as good as reading people as you think you are. You've got some natural instinct hidden in there, but having the wisdom to know how to play people and knowing when people are playing you takes some sort of investment."

"I would say that my real problem is that you're a dirty cheater."

"True." Hiroshi dealt out cards again. "But you know, understanding people is vital tradecraft. Trust the wrong person and your mission is blown."

"I don't trust any of you bastards."

"Trusting everything and trusting nothing are two sides of the same coin. They both require a lack of critical thinking. Anyway, how about we raise the stakes?" He dealt out four cards, two down, two up. "You're good with Blackjack, right Karma-kun?"

"I'm good at everything."

Hiroshi smiled again, it was a rotting sight. "I like this game, simplicity doesn't really suit us so it's a nice change of pace."

Hiroshi flipped over one card in the middle and revealed a joker.

"You don't play Blackjack with a joker."

"Why don't we add it to our game, both of us have to use it in our hand."

"How much is it worth?"

"Negotiable," Hiroshi said, peaking at his face down card, and then put it down neutrally. "We agree to a number and work it in our cards. Or maybe we can have it variable on how many cards we draw."

 _Stupid._ "How about we set it at zero."

"We could that," Hiroshi said agreeably. "But I don't want to. Unlike you, I enjoy a good gamble."

If Karma ever sneered, he would have. There was no greater purpose in adding the Joker, no great lesson to be learned and no strategy to be had. It was a game meant to irritate, he doubted if he thought of it beyond this shuffle. It would be better to fold rather than bang his head against the wall.

"And the stakes?" he asked instead.

"The chance to look good infront of your peers." Hiroshi pointed to the one way mirror. "Manami Okuda is watching."

All humor left Karma. It was almost a physical sensation, a change in air pressure, a drop in temperature, and the cards dropped completely forgotten.

Karma had no idea why they kept dragging Okuda into his life like she was some toy everyone suddenly decided he must want, but he was fucking tired of it. _Just let us be._

Karma stood up so quickly it could have been taken as a threat, the seat toppled over and its echo resounded in the room. "I'm not playing this game and I don't care who is watching." This must have been funny to Hiroshi because he started to laugh.

"You sure seem to not care with more vigor whenever it comes to Manami-chan."

Karma ignored him as he walked away.

"I get it, Karma. I get it," he said, though he got nothing. "Manami-chan isn't here for you. Not this time anyway." Karma side eyed him. "I've been informed that you are going to participate in group exercises."

The announcement felt like someone took two sides of his flesh and pulled, stretching his skin thin across the nerves. Hiroshi must have been determined to piss him off today. "I don't need group exercises."

"Unfortunately for you, this isn't my call," Hiroshi replied, and he too no longer was amused. He looked uncharacteristically solemn, and he only did that his bosses were hovering; Hiroshi disdained oversight. "The nature of the group exercises, so I have been told, are on a need to know basis. All I've heard are rumors."

Hiroshi's low tone made Karma tense, he shoved his hands into his pockets to repress the itch. "And what do the rumors say?"

"You know, I told you once that I don't make you play games unless I know you can win."

Karma snorted. "You cheat when we play, and go out of your way to put me in danger. You damn near broke Kurahashi."

"And every single one of these games, I think you all could handle, regardless of whether you win or not in the end."

"So?"

Hiroshi bent low towards his ear, at an angle the prying eyes of the security camera could not spy. "I didn't choose this mission for you." He straightened up and said louder, "Take care of Manami-chan."

And there she was, just outside the room. Hiroshi smiled cheerfully, nodded in greeting, and stepped away to give them privacy, which Karma thought was ridiculous because they didn't need it and he was tired of the overactive imaginations of these adults.

"K-K-Karma," she stammered, pale as a ghost. She was even thinner now, Karma thought idly. Her eyes were cast at her feet, she bit her lips in anxiety, her shoulders slumped inward like she was curling into herself for protection.

Karma hated whenever Hiroshi dragged her to him because superfluous thoughts he had long abandoned filtered back in, buzzing too irritably to ignore. Like: She shouldn't have been put into Project E full time. She should have been allowed to go to school and make friends. Maybe, just maybe, Project E wasn't worth the price.

"Yo, Okuda," Karma said because there was nothing he could do anyway. It had been enough for her though, and relief visibly swept over her, she loosened her stance and a tentative smile crept on her face. Karma couldn't help but return in kind; Okuda was simple in nature. Everything outside of her lab made her nervous, she had an easier time bonding with chemical pathogens than with people, but was always thankful for simple acts of kindness.

She stepped a shy shuffle closer and when Karma didn't back away, took another one. "When they told me that I wasn't working in the lab for awhile I was anxious, but now that I'm here, I'm glad I'm with you."

Karma deflected the warm comment. "What do the slave drivers have you working on?"

"Nothing much," she said with Okuda style humbleness, but she looked moderately more happy when talking about her research. That much, at least, was good. "We've shifted a bit from working with chemicals to biological experimentation. I've been assisting in cultivating bacteria that rapidly eats away toxins commonly used by antagonistic forces. It's based off of biomediation research where they use natural microbes that breakdown oil to help clean up natural disasters."

"I wasn't aware Project E did so much public good."

Okuda fidget with her fingers, twisting them together in thought. "It was meant to quickly sanitize environments in case of a biological attack. By enemies or by us."

That made more sense. "Going well?"

"Too well. We'll have to shut it down because it devours the toxins so thoroughly and rapidly, there's a risk that it would continue to decompose other material once it runs out of toxins to consume. It's not in the nature of any living organism to just starve." Rather than sounding disappointed, Okano looked quite pleased at the whole thing, until she startled as if she suddenly remembered something. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling, I'll just…"

"Are you kidding, most interesting conversation I had all week." Karma leaned on the wall next to her and she smiled gratefully again. Less than two years ago, Karma remembered, it had been her interest in poisons that helped develop the foundation to their friendship. And here again it was like nothing ever changed.

That was a dangerous.

A hand reached from the shadows and patted Okuda on the shoulder, and she shut down. Her mouth clamped up, she cast her gaze to her shoes again, and the little strings of confidence and enthusiasm evaporated.

"Manami-chan, we've been called to the briefing room on the second floor," her handler said.

Project E's handlers were some of the most unlikable bastards this side of the planet, and Okuda's handler, Adachi, personified all that was wrong with them.

If Karma was being generous, he would admit he was handsome, in a snakeish sort of way, thirtyish, slender with long lashes and blue eyes that would only work in his favor. He was also more ambitious than he was talented, and prone to jealous bouts of gossiping in between complaining about all his kids. He lazily thrusted Okuda into research training without much thought, and demanded praise for all her successes and bitterly criticized all the failures he himself cultivated.

He had been Karma's handler first, before Karma thoroughly crushed his pride and spit him out with a certain amount of glee. In a twisted sort of way, waging psychological warfare on Adachi helped Karma recover from the incident with Kurosensei, Karma threw away his hangups at the immediate goal of getting this asshole off his case.

Then he was reassigned to Okuda, and Karma should have felt guilty, but he had already decided to bury his empathy along with his mourning.

"Okay." Okuda bobbed her head in subservience and Adachi's hands tightened around her shoulder. Karma briefly thought about breaking his fingers.

"Karma," Adachi jeered, "I can't imagine why Watanabe-san would let you off your leash."

Karma cocked his head playfully. "The same reason why they let you stay on Project E despite your inability to manage anyone. Everyone is just as incompetent as you are."

Adachi sputtered but Karma quickly grabbed Okuda by the elbow and took off with her. "Let's go to the briefing. Extra baggage just slows us down."

Adachi swore angrily in the distance and Okano looked at him with wide eyes.

"He won't be happy," she said but couldn't hide the budding delight in her voice.

"Good, my happiness and his are inversely proportional," he said in terms that she would appreciate. "If you could concoct a poison for him, then my day would really be made. It doesn't have to be deadly, just enough that he ends up most of his days on the toilet, where he was destined to dwell."

She hid a shy smile behind her hand. "That wouldn't be kind."

"But you could do it," he smirked.

"I have access to a lot of different chemicals."

"Then consider it training," he said and a soft giggled emerged from behind her palm. "Here we are." At the doors of the briefing room he dropped her elbow and gave a wide breadth between the two. He shouldn't be touching and standing too close to her, he realized. Hiroshi would get the wrong idea.

The briefing room was like all the other ones, an awkward quiet under pale fluorescent lighting, the differences were visually minute but important to note, unlike the others where recording was a constant fixture- this room was soundproofed, no cameras or hidden microphones, and the doors usually remained locked with only specific key cards allowing access.

"You're in," said a voice, and Karma noticed that it was one of Hiroshi's bosses, balder and wiser than all the rest of his men. He wondered what the hell upper management was doing briefing them instead of one of his lackeys, he always pictured them to be a bunch of well suited idiots that liked to point their fingers a lot without really understanding what they were doing. They don't _actually_ do work, and especially not with them lesser mortals.

"Take your seat," he commanded and Karma would have responded immediately with a snide comment had Okuda not looked at him with a face that clearly said _please sit with me_.

When he looked at the briefing room, he noticed that they had not been alone.

At the table, clockwise from him was where Rio Nakamura, Rinka Hayami, Yuzuki Fuwa, Hinata Okano, Ryuunosuke Chiba, Hiroto Maehara, Tomohito Sugino, and Koutarou Takebayashi all sat, looking back at him.

They all looked mildly alarmed at being called, none of them seemed to know what was going on either. Karma shrugged to show he was as lost as they were.

Surprises were never good when it came from Project E. The itch was coming back, and Karma knew that Hiroshi wasn't just full of hot air, this wasn't an exercise.

The boss cleared his voice, grabbing their attention. "I am sure you have figured out that what we are preparing for something, something both dangerous and vital for the safety of our country. Something that does not leave this room."

Who, in all honesty, gives a top secret mission that risks the health of a nation to teenagers? The intelligence community seemed to be made up melodramatic bureaucrats, who take so long to wax on poetically about all the dangers and the importance of everything that it took forever to make a point.

"I can't reveal the exact mission you will be undertaking now-"

 _Of course_. Nothing is ever that easy in Project End.

"But in two weeks I am informed your winter vacation begins. In the meantime, you should inform whatever guardians necessary that you will be elsewhere for the entire week, maybe two. We'll accommodate any alibi you may need, but you should know, in that week you will not be in contact with anybody else."

He passed out papers, with too much text to bother to read. "We recommend using this time wisely to put your affairs in order," he said. Then he pushed up his glasses up his nose. "These are your basic waivers and list of instructions for these upcoming days, how to create an alibi, contracts that assure total confidentiality. Most of these," he flipped through the papers, and in a most underwhelming tone said, "are simply a cautionary measures, there's no reason to be alarmed, but I would not dismiss it entirely."

Karma flipped to the last page. It was instructions on how to construct a will.

* * *

 **A/N:** I consider myself a petty person. I like to look through old comments from reactions of old assclass fanfictions and laugh at all the people who celebrated Kayano's death and called her a bitch.

I was googling to try to find out where the backwater places in Japan were and all I really got was the Shikoku province.

There's some political talk here, and I am wary of saying too much because I know very little and probably got some things wrong but here is the basics I'm using: the [National] Diet is the legislative branch of the Japanese government and consists of two chambers. In the more powerful of houses, iirc, you can get elected two ways, direct election for a politician but they also fill seats through a party list system- where you vote for a party that has a list of candidates. Then the party wins seats directly proportional to the votes they have, and the candidates get chosen by the party- that is how Kanazaki's father can get into power despite being unpopular or unnoticed.

I was also thinking about going on a whole schbiel about why I chose the Democratic Party rather than the LDP, which has been dominating politics in Japan for most of its modern history but it would just be exposition heavy and also boring and most definitely getting a lot wrong. Maybe one day, when I am not going to embarrass myself with how little I know.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to write, I think I enjoy giving my favorite characters a hard time, angst comes incredibly easy for me, while fluff and comedy is definitely out of my comfort zone. It's all different ways of connecting with characters.

As far as writing characters I loathe or love, sometimes I'm surprised myself. Like I'll bring up a character I loathe but need for the plot but I find myself really enjoy writing, or at least find it really easy. Maybe because I don't overthink them, or the way they talk, or how they bounce off of other characters, but it comes natural to me. Meanwhile I'm struggling with characters I adore for one reason or another, and I have to sit there and think about how awkward I make them, or fall into a trap I never meant to.

Yeah, I always thought, like you, Gakushuu would manage to overstep his father, and at least, that was always the intent. But I suppose this story is a sort of "what if the worst happens" because adversity sometimes brings out the worst instead of the best. Gakushuu had the potential to be close with and equals to Class E, but the way they went, it just divided them even more.  
Thank you for your review, as always, I love your insights.

 **Crazy rabbit2:** I have no idea what went through my head with the Gakushuu Kayano scene other than a) I wish all the characters interacted more and b) I wanted to see Karma and Kayano both playing him for their own ends. This by no means is because I dislike him, I just think it's a fun idea to bounce around. Especially since he would really want to know what's going on but he's always out of the loop.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Thank you for your review! I'm glad you find it interesting, and scary too, because in the end it was never moon destroyers that ruined their lives, it was other people. It's fun at least in a morbid way, to see what happens to people under fire.


	6. Chapter 5: A Time to Prepare

_Project End_

Chapter 5: "A Time to Prepare"

"You're drunk," Fuwa said.

"Astute observation," Rio replied. "You really are a master detective." She took another sip of vodka straight from her water bottle. It tasted like pure, shit flavored ethanol but it burned down her throat, warm and inviting, and she felt her body relax in appreciation. To be sure, she wasn't completely inebriated but she hoped to get there soon.

"It's barely noon. You're an alcoholic," Fuwa egged on.

"A functioning alcoholic, if you please. It's something I take pride in."

Fuwa sighed. "Takeyabashi will be pissed if you keep this up."

"Takeyabashi's always pissed." The last time he saw her, he said he was surprised that her liver hadn't liquidized itself and ran straight out of her body. She told him she was disappointed too, but the night was still young. He told her she'd just drink that too.

 _Uwah, he's glaring at me. He really is angry_. For as much as Takeyabashi despised being called a doctor, he was certainly as naggy as one. And as bitchy as a mother. But that's what she liked about him. And if she drank some more, even Fuwa's persistent drilling would be endearing.

"C'mon," Fuwa bumped their shoulders casually, "They have us doing group exercises. I can't believe you're going to do them drunk."

"And I'm not sure how you get through them completely sober."

Whatever they were doing, it didn't look like an obstacle she wanted to face without some sort of liquid therapy or at minimum, some kind of head trauma. Between days of training, they were drilled over and over again in confidentially seminars, they hadn't even been allowed to inform their handlers that they received a mission. Then again, instructing her not to talk to her handler was the closest thing they've done to doing her a favor. She could do without the stick up the asses though.

"Take a seat," the case officer said, low and commanding like he had given the most important of orders. These people acted like they were in a constant threat of having a heart attack.

The oval table was large and had just enough seats for all of them, so polished Rio could admire herself in its gloss. Glancing around, she realized she hadn't been the last one there, Chiba and Hayami were conspicuously absent and Maehara and Karma were always going to be late as the only ones in the group that attended civilian school.

Rio sat next to Fuwa, because Fuwa always managed to figure out what the hell was going on first and if Rio was going to have to sit through the insufferable huffing she might as well as know why. It was only a happy coincidence it was far away from Takeyabashi, who was glaring daggers at her bottle, adjusting his glasses for maximum judgement.

A second later Hayami and Chiba snuck through the doors, acknowledging their friends with a nonchalant tilt of their head. After the Kurosensei incident, they both practically functioned as mutes to anyone but each eachother, and were just short of surgically attached. It hadn't been like Kanazaki and Sugino, whose relationship resembled a shoujo manga, but with more PTSD, in all of its charming and nauseating nature, or Megu and Yada, which was just as ugly and hard as it was inspiring and beautiful; Hayami and Chiba were practically the same person in different skins.

It hadn't escaped anyone's attention that Chiba's hair was more disheveled than normal, and Hayami's shirt was buttoned improperly, probably from haste, and her skirt was slightly askew. Everyone else had the grace to pretend not to notice, but Rio gave them a smirk that they willfully disregarded.

She wasn't judging, everyone coped somehow, and humping like rabbits with someone you love was a hell of a lot healthier than drinking in the morning.

She swung her feet on the table. "So how about we get a move on? We're all here right?"

"We- we're waiting for Karma-kun," Okuda said in a hushed voice.

Okano raised a brow. "It's school hours."

On that note, Karma and Maehara entered as if they just been waiting for an opening liner. They could be quite the presence, both handsomely eyecatching and knew it, making it even more obnoxious. Rio made a face.

"I thought you had school," Okano said as Maehara plopped into the seat next to her. Karma, so casually that it made Rio think that there was no way on earth could it have been truly casual, sat next to Okuda. The bespectacled girl looked relieved.

"Doctors appointment," Maehara said with a self satisfied grin. "It's not a total lie; I heard we're getting physicals today."

Karma spun lazily in his chair. "It's not like there was much there to learn anyway."

And with those words, Rio felt a spike of not quite-resentment, it was a swamp like feeling that settled in the bottom of the stomach.

She'd always known that Karma and her been cut from the same cloth, inexplicably intelligent which was all but squandered by lack of motivation and a love for chaos. They had also both gotten Adachi as their initial handler, and for all intents and purposes they were similar enough that Adachi could have switched training regimes and they would have thrived.

And somehow Karma gotten to go back to school while Rio was pulled back to study at Project E fulltime.

On the surface, there was merit to it; the whole purpose of allowing them to go to school was because they were trying to get them to make connections. Kunugigaoka High was filled with kids on the fast track to prestige, some through hard work, most because mommy and daddy paved the way. But Rio was of the opinion that this was such an awful idea that she seriously wondered if Adachi had been sniffing paint when choosing Karma.

It was often overlooked because he was overshadowed by the similar faults of Manami and Itona, and the shining of his own brilliance, but Karma, for all intents and purposes, was socially constipated.

Karma could give orders, Karma could dominate, but he _didn't_ rub elbows, Karma barely made friends. It was by pure luck he managed to find someone as go with the flow as Nagisa, and was in a class with as many personality deficiencies as Class E. His current classmates would run screaming at the idea of socializing with him, something that suited Karma just fine. Rio for all her faults, would have been a much better choice, and unlike Karma she would have craved for some breathing room.

Then Karma taunted and overwhelmed Adachi, which on any other day she would have appreciated with a good laugh, but then Karma was removed from his management and Rio was stuck with this man who had a tendency for subpar decisions, but was too proud to let another Project E member slip from his fingers. Karma must have a permanent silver spoon lodged in his ass somewhere.

He must have noticed her eyeing him and he gave her a devil's grin. "Falling in love?"

"No, I'm actually thinking about how much of a piece of shit you are."

Karma's grin grew, and as much as her complaining went, it was always fun with Karma. Whether or not he was an ass. There were few people she could be completely honest with and took it like playful banter.

"If you are all here, we can start the exercise," said the case officer, and damn was he as stiff as he was bald. Not a bit of personality shinning anywhere. He passed out ten red poker chips and five blue each.

Rio groaned. It was going to be one of _those_ exercises.

"The rules are," he looked at his syllabus with a squint, then nodded. "Yes, the rules are simple, you win, you get to go home early after your physical. You don't, you stay with all lunch and dinner privileges denied."

Everyone shifted in their seats, miserable and anxious. Chiba and Hayami joined hands under the table.

"Each one of your chips is a bid, the red equals one and the blue are two, the person who makes the largest bid first gets all the chips at the end of the round. You keep playing the game until it can be reasonably determined that there is no point in playing anymore," he drolled like he was utterly bored to be here. He probably was, Rio certainly was. He put down his paper.

"We'll begin with you kid," he pointed to Sugino, who for the past couple of weeks had been looking rather pale despite a normally deep, athletic tan. Almost sickly pale, something wasn't right.

"Ah, um," Sugino looked at the rest of them nervously, and that too was unusual. He put out one chip tentatively. Takeyabashi considered his one chip, and then slid two. Hayami slid three and Chiba didn't slide any offers after seeing hers.

"Oh I get it," Fuwa murmured to her left, but so had Rio. It was an easy game to understand.

She slid everything she had, because fortune favored the bold. The numerical values and overcomplicated rules were just a distraction, the winstate was simple- the first person who gave everything won. Fuwa made a soft disappointed sound when she saw Rio, and everyone realized their mistake. It was almost insultingly basic, which meant the game was played for another reason, maybe to see how cautious people were under uncertainty.

A mind game.

Karma probably figured it out too because he looked utterly unimpressed when the round ended on his turn.

"We go for another round," he said. This time Sugino simply pulled all his coins out like Rio did before, but it was useless now that Rio had a sum total greater than everyone else. Sugino always preferred doing than thinking, and whatever happened to the poor kid, he looked as if he was living outside of his own head.

"Again," the man said after the round ended, and Rio frowned. What was there left to do?

She complied again, betting her original chips plus one insuring her victory.

When it reached her, Okuda pushed all her chips out. Then Karma did too, joining their coins.

Rio frowned. "The hell are you doing?"

Karma shrugged. "Bald-san didn't say we couldn't pool our resources."

Rio whipped her head to the case officer, who didn't react to either the insulting nickname or the clear violation of the rules. Rio sighed and rubbed her temples, the turned ended, and Karma and Okuda now had the lead.

 _Of course_. Should she make a team with the others? Chiba and Hayami would now work together and they had near full chips too. Damn, she just wanted to go home, should she work with Fuwa-

"Of course!" Fuwa declared, slamming her fist down in dramatic fashion.

"Could you not anime on us right now," Okano groaned.

Fuwa looked very self satisfied with the whole thing. "Bald-san," she said, because they really hadn't remembered his name and he seemed to react in the same apathetic way no matter how he was addressed, "Is there a limit to how large a coalition can be?"

"No." He didn't bother looking up from his papers that undoubtedly held their schedule. Ugh, it had so much writing.

Fuwa snapped her fingers. "Then, winners just mean whoever has the most numerical value. And if individuals have similar values, they would share the win."

"Correct."

"So in theory, if we all work together, we can establish equal shares."

"Indeed." He flipped his paper, reading the next content without so much as an amused huff.

"Then let's do that," Fuwa said excitedly, "Everyone wins."

There was a short murmuring at the table, and Rio felt properly foolish. They all did. Two years ago, this wouldn't have been an issue, they wouldn't have been so obsessed with competing against one another that they would have missed the very obvious solution of working communally.

From Karma's face, she could tell he didn't enjoy the message. "What's this? Cooperative, non zero sum games where everybody wins? You warmed the cockles of my heart. Go team." He halfheartedly pumped his fist in front of him in sarcastic victory.

"If you assumed that there had to be a loser because there was a winner," Bald-san went on, non pulsed, "Then that says more about you than me."

"If you wanted to say that the only way to go through our mission is to work cooperatively," Karma retorted smoothly, sinking into the back of his chair with a delinquent's slouch, "You could have just said it. Now we all just wasted our time."

"And if you had the mindset to protect all of your teammates you would have done it, instead of focusing on just one." The case officer already looked done with the conversation. "Mah, if I was saying that this game wasn't supposed to encourage problem solving through team think, I would be lying. I would also be lying if I told you I cared about your feelings on how we proceeded. If you want to be properly mentored, then here is your advice." His bald head gleamed under overhead lights.

"Grow up. The upcoming mission is something that you will need to face together, or die alone."

Rio bit her lower lip. The more and more they prattled on about this field operation, the less she liked it. Bald-san paused, he looked up and down at Rio, observing with frowning eyes.

"You're drunk," he stated.

"My handler told me that drinking and smoking were requirements to being a spy," Rio replied breezily. "I've been building tolerance to be able to work effectively while intoxicated."

It wasn't a complete lie, she had started drinking because Adachi wanted her working on espionage, and people talked in bars and smoke breaks. You can't be a spy if you're cigarette and alcohol abstinent, everyone knew that. True she had escalated it, but as long as it didn't interfere with her work Adachi didn't care. Neither did this guy.

"Well then you better sober up by tomorrow," Bald-san said. "Today we had fun-" Karma snorted, "We played a game, you get physicals, you go home. Tomorrow we make you sweat, and if you come drunk, then you just may choke on your own vomit."

He took the drink and she watched as the rest of her coveted breakfast of champions spill gloriously on the floor.

* * *

To put it in terms humans could comprehend, it was like trying to navigate the world without glasses, like listening to music with cotton in their ears, like trying to wade through thick swamp water. Ritsu was not handicapped, but she simply couldn't perform the way she had.

"You don't need to do this for me," Kayano told Ritsu, her slumped posture and her gaze towards the floor suggested that Kayano felt burdened by this knowledge, and responsible for her less than whole state of being. A distinctly human impulse, Kayano was not at fault. It simply was what it was. In a way, though, this was why Ritsu enjoyed her classmate's presence, this pure, youthful selfishness and a contradictory altruism that extended to even programs like Ritsu.

"I want to help you," Ritsu replied, in the speakers her voice crackled and sounded less human than it used to. Ritsu had never fooled herself into believing she was anything but ones and zeros, and she never felt inferior from the fact. But there were times long ago when she felt the line between the two were crumbling, data and blood being not too distant in substance; Ritsu had hobbies like a human, she had a face like a human, she had a voice like a human.

The Ritsu now was significantly less homosapien. She was also significantly less Ritsu, but she would not tell that to Kayano now.

"I made dinner reservations with Yanagisawa at ten tonight," Kayano said finally. She pressed her lips into a sour smile, the stress lines on her face informing Ritsu that it was indeed forced.

"Do you really think this is wise? Kanazaki expressed her disapproval."

"If it was anyone else this might be dangerous," Kayano replied, she breathed out quickly, blowing her wet bangs away from her eyes. "But it's less a risk if you can play into their expectations. People see what they want to see and Yanagisawa wants to believe he's smarter than everyone else. As long as your target thinks they are in control, it's okay to make your move."

"Is he not?" she inquired and Kayano frowned, rubbing her hand over her mouth.

"If I want him to stay away from something, all I have to do is coily suggest that he should go there. Then when he avoids it, I'd express my disappointment that he didn't go, and it reinforces his belief that he's been tricking me the entire time. And now my position is even better."

"So who was the one that suggested this dinner?"

"Neither, we occasionally meet up. But he is the one that has to choose place and time, otherwise he'll be suspicious." Kayano was towel drying her hair when she let it fall to her shoulders. "I won't say it's easy to make him believe my decisions were his idea all along, but with people like Yanagisawa he looks for evidence that he's always winning. Always been like that for as long as I can remember."

"And what if he is tricking you into thinking your tricking him while he's tricking you?"

"He's not. He can't act."

"You suspiciously sound like you have similar arrogance that you accuse him of."

Kayano shrugged. "It's not arrogance if it's true."

"That supposition is based off an incorrect definition of the word arrogance." She brought up the dictionary.

"Touché. But semantics aside; what do you need me to do?"

"I just need to be located in his general vicinity," Ritsu replied. "At my peak I would have been able to hack into his research facility, but with my capabilities stunted and his heightened security, I'm afraid it would be difficult. In a straight forward attack, the probability of my detection remains at ninety-seven point seven percent."

Kayane slipped off her garments in quiet consideration. Kayano was always thinking, although it was not always apparent from shallow observation. This Kayano spent most of her hours acting, and expressed an impressive ability to calculate in any number of high pressure situations without letting her intentions slip. But here, in the privacy of her house, only in front of Ritsu, she was silent like a grave. Her eyes were distant, her movements were labored, like her thoughts weighed her down.

In the silence, Ritsu could concentrate on writing her lines of code while run a quick diagnosis. Ritsu was aware that her backup was slightly corrupted, it was never meant to create an entirely new Ritsu program, especially on such an inferior processor like Chairman Asano's personal computer.

In some way, her situation reminded her of Hazama's stories, the ones that kept up her classmates up at night, reacting reflexively to otherwise normal stimuli. What remained of Ritsu was an odd equivalent of a digital ghost, maybe even a zombie. A collection of information that was like Ritsu, almost Ritsu, but lacking in a quality that made her truly... alive. She didn't even retain the original Ritsu's complete memory banks, having been created near the beginning of the end of Kurosensei's death, but still lacked the experience of his last moments. She could only manage to investigate the basics from news and the few moments Kayano would speak of it.

Ritsu was the dead walking, the fragments of a long broken program left drifting.

Then that night when the revelation came to her, Kayano had said, "No, you're not dead. We're alive, Ritsu."

Ritsu knew that statement was logically unsound. They were not the same, Ritsu was never, in the technical sense, alive. But the point had been made clear, and she took comfort in the resoundness of the statement. _I think therefore I am_. Ritsu had to believe she was alive because Kayano believed. And Ritsu not only wanted to believe, she wanted to confirm it.

"Ping," went Kayano's cellphone, and she read her text. " _I am not dead."_

In some ways, Ritsu thought Kayano was like her, a backup of a long broken original. Kayano had reverted to before she had fully accepted her class, back when revenge was her primary motive of operation and was unable to progress forward. She was missing vital components that had defined her; the way her eyes lit up whenever she ate sweets, the redness of her cheeks flaring in embarrassment, the guarded but kind smile-

Nagisa, Aguri, Kurosensei.

Kayano was alive, but she was a little less Kayano than she was before. And maybe she too needed a reminder that she was not dead.

"It's time," Kayano informed unnecessarily. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and smoothed the skirt of a nearby school uniform.

"Will you not be wearing anything nicer?" Ritsu inquired.

Kayano gave a halfhearted smirk. "Yanagisawa likes when I wear it. I told him I was going to this school, and he knows I'm not. So whenever he sees me in it, it reminds him of how much smarter he is."

It took roughly twenty-seven minutes and fourteenth seconds from the time the laptop was stuffed in a school bag, to when she could pick up the muffled sounds of Kayano greeting someone.

"This place is lovely," she heard Kayano friend say, and heard a distinct 'thunk' as her friend let her bag fall to the floor. Yanagisawa's voice sounded too distant and muffled from the bag to maintain 100% confidence of what he was saying, but even without complete voice match recognition, she knew it was him. His voice had a similar tempo, a distinct crawl of self-satisfaction and a low baritone.

Ritsu began working. Yanagisawa's labs adopted strict security measures to keep their secrets safe, true, but most times employees did not apply such vigilance to their personal devices. Ritsu was close enough to search for the specific radiowaves of his bluetooth settings, and thankfully, Yanagisawa's was on, there was probably not enough time to brute force her way into finding the correct MAC Address.

"My parents are fine," Kayano said with a firmness to her voice as Ritsu began to download his voicemails, texts, and every information she could find onto the laptop. The sheer amount of processing power was draining the battery life faster than it should, and while she would probably had enough time to gain access to what she needed, Ritsu wasn't fond of hibernating within a shut down computer. It was a more terrifying than human slumber, although not quite the point of non existence.

 _"I'm not dead."_

"No, no it's not important. My friend is just texting me," Kayano flippantly said. Ritsu scanned the apps and found LINE, _good._ Ritsu made a program just for that, LINE was enough of a mainstay on the mobile market that it was safe enough gamble. She quickly uninstalled it, and then took control of the mobile device and reinstalled an unofficial one she had modified. It had been a low hanging fruit, even an amateur could manipulate the binary code of a mobile app, repackage it and bring it online, but the most effective way to control a phone was often the easiest. Now she could gain access with the compromised app, even from a distance.

She had just finished taking all the information she could and begun sorting it out when she heard Kayano say, "Thank you for the dinner. It's always wonderful to see you." There was some more shuffling and Yanagisawa must have leaned in because she could finally make out his words.

"You were wonderful, Akari-chan. Your sister would be proud."

Kayano didn't reply to that, but a minute later, Ritsu's mic picked up the sounds of the street, people herding in crowds, and Kayano's shuddering breaths, deep and full of anger.

When Ritsu had five percent battery left, she was abruptly plugged back into the sockets of Kayano's apartment, and she allowed herself to bring up all the sleeping programs to a working mode like she was stretching. It was good to be awake.

"Did you find anything?" Kayano was shedding her jacket in a hurry, like she was ripping something particularly unpleasant from her body. The buttons threatened to snap as she quickly undressed.

"I'm looking through his database now. There doesn't seem to be anything compromising, but he's a workaholic, and they sound like they are particularly excited about a new weapon they are testing. I'm also making a list of all the employees he is conversing with."

Kayano slipped a large sweatshirt over her head, it hung loose around her skin and bones and fell just above the knees like a dress; while Ritsu always knew that Kayano fell under the national average in height and weight, she looked alarmingly small now. She should compile a plan for a more recommended caloric intake. Kayano pulled her hair free from the under the confides of the shirt. "Wouldn't there be easier ways to find a list of all his employees?"

"Even at a cursory glance it is obvious that he has structured his accounting to hide figures. Most likely for tax evasion purposes."

Kayano snorted. "He wins big by claiming the bounty on Kurosensei and still skims on taxes. It figures."

"Indeed, none of the money he has gained from the reward seems to be recorded, in his personal banks or his work accounts, so wherever he has diverted those funds to is secret." Ritsu went through all his voice messages, most from his personal assistant soundings terrified to even have called him. "I have access to his phone, I'm considering emailing someone with the proper authority to gain access to their computer." Ritsu buzzed with possibilities, the humm of her fans overworking itself prompted Kayano to elevate it and let it cool.

It had been simple to create a rootkit, she could easily create a backdoor to a computer and run it with administrator privileges. Rootkits were notoriously difficult to spot, and even harder to get rid of. As long as she was careful in not to disrupt any activities, she would not be discovered.

"Not from Yanagisawa's phone, he's the head of the company and any message he sends would be too visible. There's too much of a possibility that he'll hear about it." Kayano bit her thumb.

"There are other venues of access." Ritsu didn't get "gut feelings" like humans did, but she was equipped with complex algorithms that denoted certain possibility percentages and used them to determine which routes were best explored. And her... gut feeling told her to look into his personal assistant, within the messages she always sounded hurried- like she was caught unaware- and sounded young, in her early twenties at most. Ritsu did a quick search on his personal assistant and found someone in the networks she was reasonably sure was her. Online pictures show she comfortably fit in the standard deviation of what most would consider attractive, more than enough to gain employment possibilities on purely visual standards rather than academic or workmanship.

Her activity log showed that she was, like most people in her age demographic, perpetually on social networks, and was still active during work hours. Likes and retweets showed that she was especially interested in celebrity gossip and Kdramas, frequently enjoyed taking online quizzes, and was susceptible to checking her horoscope. Ritsu could probably send her a link with a virus, and if relevant enough to her interests there was a high probability she would click it during at her work computer.

"I won't be able to go further until the next work day," Ritsu informed her. "But that is fine. I'll continue debugging my rootkit program, it would be a shame if all my complex code became exposed because I overlooked something." She would also have to finalize her plan. She could, after she accessed her computer, attempt to compromise another computer with higher privileges directly, as long as they were in the same domain. Or, because the personal assistant the CEO had access to everyone, she could send a compromised rich format text like a pdf to their tech support. The nature of a virus is to be adaptable, there were plenty of ways to exploit their system.

Coding was an art.

"Ritsu, am I wrong?" Kayano interrupted, staring at the rows of code as Ritsu wrote them across her screen, typing the way artists paint.

"Yes, I believe so," Ritsu replied immediately.

Kayano laughed at her frankness, but it sounded as if it was malfunctioning, too weak to fully encapsulate the emotion it usually intends to express. "I made peace with the idea that I might be a long time ago. But you, and Kanazaki's anger, and Takeyabashi's scolding, even Itona and Karma don't seem to have the highest opinion of me. It kind of knocks the wind out of you." She wrapped her arms around her legs. "I'm here now though, this is what I have. Kanazaki told me she wants me to heal, but I got nothing left."

"You have me. We are not dead."

Kayano buried her head into her knees. "Thank you, Ritsu."

"You are welcome."

"Thank you so, so much. Thank you."

"Of course."

"Thanks," she kept repeating. "I really appreciate it."

Ritsu wished she was more like her original program, where she could make her face soften and her voice warmer, but she wasn't. So she also said, "And thank you Kayano. Thank you for saving me. Right or wrong, I'm with you to the end."

* * *

Karma lifted his head from the pool of freezing water gasping hard for breath, relief came hard when air flooded his lungs. Water and icy slush clung to his hair as water poured down his face, his lips were turning blue, but fucking hell if he'd let his teeth clatter from the stinging cold. His shoulder still rattled from exertion, him trying to breathe too much in at one time.

"As much as you talk," Bald-san said, flipping a page from his book, "I thought you'd be tougher. Again."

He put his hand on his head and pushed down, submerging Karma back into the water. Each time he had to keep his mind from going numb from the shock of the temperature.

Karma was exhausted from overexertion, probably bruised, and his body felt like it was breaking down. He hadn't though, because he'd never let them fucking get one over him, but _hell_ he wanted it to end.

In Class E, he had been pushed to his limits before, his assassination classes ended with him being tired with his body aching and sweat rolling down his back. But this was different, back in middleschool days it was about training to make them stronger and there was pride in being sore at the end of the day. This wasn't meant to make them stronger, this was meant to break them. They were testing him, they wanted to see how much punishment he could take.

He clenched his jaw as his face numbed in the biting water, it began to invade his limits and when he couldn't take it anymore, someone grabbed his hair and twisted. He humiliatingly, cried out in water, more in surprise than pain, and water assailed him, down his throat and up his nose until he was filled with it, and his head was lifted again. He choked out the water, coughing and purging it from his body. He doubled over as the coughs racked his body, even after there was nothing left to clear.

 _What the fuck are we doing?_

After the physicals on that one day, Takeyabashi came up looking even more stressed and worried than usual.

"Did you notice the vaccinations they gave us?" he had said in a grave voice. His brow was furrowed and his lips near disappeared they were so tightly pressed together. "Typohoid, tuberculosis, hepatitis. Then a booster shot to help our immune system. I think we're traveling out of country."

Karma slicked back soaking hair from his eyes as he pushed up to his feet. Bald-san didn't look on approvingly or disapprovingly but he finally shut his book.

"You can still stand," he stated with abject neutrality. "Twenty minute break before we go to firearms practice."

It hadn't slipped Fuwa's notice that they taken away their usual SIG Sauer P220 for training with weapons like the AK-47. It would just be another training decision, but the SIG's and the Howa's they've been putting away were distinctly used by the Japanese police or military.

"They either don't think we'll have access to them or they're trying to hide their involvement," Fuwa concluded. "Either way, the constant is we won't be in Japan."

The evidence kept piling up. He didn't know why Project E just didn't fucking _tell them_ , they were only two days away from the deadline and no one was giving him a reason for all this secrecy. He scratched at the imaginary itch under his skin, his fingers too wet to cause the normal scars.

Begrudgingly, he understood why they weren't talking, because Karma had the unfortunate ability to at least acknowledge the logic behind some of their methods. In an organization that was built on the currency of secrets, it was either extremely appropriate or highly ironic, that it was impossible to keep something secret in Project E for so long. Even if the details weren't available, it quickly became well known that _something_ was going down, and the handlers swarmed to figure it out like there was blood in the water.

Karma slogged to the bathroom for a moment of privacy, he needed a second to regain himself. Even though it was only his head and shoulders submerged, he felt waterlogged to his knees, his pace was a slow, heavy walk and he couldn't hide the tiredness in his movement. How long was he subject to near perpetual abuse? If nothing else, this was his first break for hours and running on two hours of sleep.

He grimaced when he spied Hiroshi and Adachi prattling to each other, coffees in hand. Adachi stared at Karma's state with a look of satisfaction and curiosity. Hiroshi raised a brow and his own grin. They knew enough to know not to ask questions, but they were still enjoying the view.

 _Fuck off_ he wanted to say, but instead he just smiled and said, "Yo, Adachi. I'd say to not mind the mess, but you're probably used to it considering your career."

Adachi sniffed indignantly. "He's all yours Watanabe-san." He huffed out the room, stomping. "You look like a drowned rat," Adachi called out when he was safe enough away, then power walked out of the hallway as fast as he could without seeming too desperate.

"Why do you hang out with Adachi?" Karma asked, eyeing a jovial Hiroshi, obviously enjoying the exchange. He followed him to the restroom. "I mean, you're no prize but he's a moron."

"You know what they say, keep your enemies close, and the jackasses closer." Hiroshi took a sip of his coffee, seemed to think better of it, and poured it out in the sink while muttering about it taking like old socks. "Besides it's interesting."

"You avoid entirely too much work if you think Adachi interesting. Do something productive."

"I will the day they learn how to make a decent cup of coffee," he said pulling out a cigarette. Karma wasn't sure Project E appreciated their workers smoking in their restrooms, but neither he nor Hiroshi really gave a shit about what they wanted. "And I mean, Adachi is a terrible handler which makes his continued stay even more fascinating. If you're bad at your job and still employed, it's either a comment about who is running this ponyshow, or Adachi is doing something right."

"He's a kiss ass."

"Even kissing ass requires its own talent. All tradecraft has a place." He exhaled, the smoke lingering in the air and the smell assaulting Karma just as surely as the water before. "Adachi is a good enough businessman to smooze his way here and stay. That's interesting, even if talking to him a lesson in mediocrity."

"We have different definitions of interesting, Hiroshi."

"It's Watanabe-san, you brat," he corrected futilely. Then thoughtfully added, "They say they're giving you all a break for winter vacation, it starts what, in the next two days? Out of the goodness of their hearts."

"Of course," his voice dripping with false sincerity. "They always look after us."

"Enjoy your vacation, Karma-kun, and learn to lie better. When you come back, the work begins again. No rest for the wicked."

-x-

The next day they were all ushered in the briefing room again, and Karma wondered if they were finally done with all the resistance to interrogation training, weapons practice, physical grind, and the many, many hours wasted on confidentiality agreements. Now he just wanted to know because the itch was coming on so strong he was in danger of rubbing his skin raw.

"You ready for D-day?" Rio stretched out like a cat in the chair next to him.

"Japan was on the other side of the war, try to use terminology that's not so ominous."

"This whole damn thing was ominous from the getgo." She spread her fingers out in front of her, they were shaking slightly. Probably from withdrawal.

"Well, I'm sure we're as prepared as we can be. I mean, you're sober for once."

"Not for long, hopefully." She rested her chin on her hands. "When we get back from wherever we're going, we'll go drinking. Won't give you none of my stuff, though, that's for the big boys. I'll get you something more your style, like a cosmopolitan. I'll even get you one of those frilly drink umbrellas." She twisted an invisible umbrella between two fingers with a wide smile.

Karma spared her a quirk of his lips, there were very few people that he could verbally spar, and fewer still he _liked_ verbally sparring with, and Rio was one of them. He knew there was an underlying animosity there, less personal hatred and more annoyance at the situation at hand, but she hadn't bothered to hide it and instead used it as extra ammunition in one of their rare talks. For as much as there was unfortunate history, there was an acknowledgement of how well they synch'd together. For people like them, it was rare.

"We're not all in top shape," she said nodding to Sugino slightly. He looked like a godamned beaten dog, and it couldn't have been from the physical training, Sugino has always been pretty sturdy. From what Kayano said, Kanazaki must have hit him hard, his face looked sunken in and his eyes continued to focus in and out, he couldn't concentrate. He was wilting before his eyes, barely there in spirit. Rio hid her concern with a flippant attitude, but it was still there. "I don't know what the fuck Bald-san is thinking, take one look at him and you can see he needs to be pulled. What the hell happened to him?"

So she didn't know. He would have told her, but he wasn't sure if there was a good time to say he was gallivanting with rogue Class E members while under the watch of all these people.

The final two members, Chiba and Hayami, walked in, always last. Hayami fixed her pigtails and the corners of lipgloss shined on the crook of Chiba's neck. Some people, it seemed, managed to find private time even within Project E. Or didn't care if they watched, which is odd because the two were always so private.

"Holy hell, you two need to calm down," Okano scowled. "You can't be in the same room for thirty minutes before jumping each other."

Hayami said nothing as she fixed her lip gloss, but she allowed a very satisfied look cross her face.

"Gross."

Maehara shook his finger. "Don't be jealous, Okano. It's unsightly." Okano made a rude hand gesture and Maehara laughed. Even Sugino, in his hollowness, smiled thinly, until the doors slammed open and their very serious case officer strolled in, manila folders in arms.

Fuck the manila folders, the manila folders never brought anything good.

The room went silent, Maehara's laugh died in his throat, and Sugino retreated into his misery again. The itched buzzed Karma's entire body, demanding the satisfaction of knowing what they been working for, and Okuda caught his eye, boring with uncertainty. He nodded to her, and she relaxed again. She fiddled with the ends of her braid as Bald-san began to pass out the folders.

The lights dimmed and everyone held their breaths, a small glow of the room remained just enough to read through the folders' contents. In front of them, a projector came alive, humming and darting pictures of foreign scenery above them, like they were looking through a travel agency presentation. Bald-san wandered to the side of the image, the edge of the projector's bright light emblazoning the sharpness of his expensive suit, Italian cut and pinlines.

"It says here," he said reading from the various notes he always brought with him, "That Nakamura Rio, Yuzuki Fuwa, and Akabare Karma all had training in foreign languages." He frowned, or at least, Karma guessed he was frowning. "Not to a significant enough level."

Well what the hell did he expect, the foreign linguistic courses had them studying a cocktail of languages, too many to concentrate and master. He had been under the impression that they would get the basics of all of them and chose one or two to become fluent in. Some of them made sense. English was a given. French was the official language of NATO, Chinese was becoming increasingly important as it grew as an economic power and their territorial disputes began to stress, and Korean was always a special interest as Japanese intelligence were notorious for running investigations on Koreans within their borders, but there had been some smaller, lesser known languages that he never understood the importance of.

"Nakamura, Mehara, and Okano all have seduction courses. Takeyabashi has medical training and Okuda Manami has biochemical training. All decent tradecraft, I suppose." He finally put down his paper, staring at them hard.

"If you're worth half the resources we poured into you, you all probably figured out that you're leaving country," he said rubbing his naked head. He lifted his hand to a map, pointing at a small island south of Japan. "This small island in particular, I'm sure you heard its name in geography class but never really bothered to remember it. Completely worthless in terms of being an ally, an economic failure, politically a farce, and has no resources to draw our interest, but it's physically close enough that their instability is a strategic threat to our country."

"Enough of the geopolitics lesson," Rio drawled, "Get on with it."

He didn't even glance at her. "The reigning government is officially a republic, the same way the Titanic was one of the greatest ships in the world. You will learn this soon enough, but a weak government can ruin a country just as absolutely as a strong corrupt one. Do you know what happens when states fail? Other people come up to fill that vacuum. Often violently."

He clicked his hand, and a small device changed the slide, this time of a group of poorly dressed young men, the rags they wore were dirtied, their faces were hardened, and they looked near homeless if not for the firearms they shouldered proudly.

"There's been infighting in this country for years. Mostly it's self contained factions fighting for control, deadly to their citizens, but there was not enough splashover to our country for us to consider significant intervention."

"How nice of us."

Click.

"However, escalation warrants at least cursory attention. Two years ago we had one of our agents infiltrate the group. What he reported is mostly on a need to know basis, but what you should know is that they've been stockpiling weapons, and there are rumors of them considering expanding their fighting into other areas. Including our own."

The next picture was of a man with tanned skin and a sweet unassuming smile, hair tussled in the wind and bright eyes. "This is our agent, he was commonly known in the field as Bu. You will find more information about him in your folder." Bald-san rarely showed emotion, but when he did, the room changed temperature. Karma felt colder. "He disappeared recently. It's not uncommon for him to go dark, but he has missed his last two cold drops, and no one has heard of him since. It should be obvious the seriousness of the situation, if he is compromised, this will go beyond a scandal. Japan's international relationships in the region is not so comfortable that our neighbors will turn a blind eye to our increased presence behind their borders."

"So why us?" Fuwa asked, crossing her arms. Karma could see her activate detective mode.

"One of their main sources of income is human trafficking. We hope that because you are so young, they would drop their guard."

"You're _trafficking us_?" Rio said incredulously, distaste pitched her voice higher. "And what, we're just supposed to wander into their base? Say here we are, come and get the kids while they're hot!"

"You'll have someone experienced acting as your trafficker, they'll be on point and hold most of the responsibility of this mission."

"Who?" Karma asked, "I hope not you. No offense, but the enemy could see your the sun reflecting off your head from space." Karma hoped he took some offense.

"We contracted out to someone you would work well with and is an expert in infiltration with a strong knowledge of human trafficking."

Karma raised a brow.

"It's not a matter of trust, they contracted out to the best. " A voice like raw silk flowed into the room as the door opened once again. Project E stared dumbfounded at the hourglass figure, prowling into the room. " Looks like we get to work together again."

"Bitch-sensei!"

"You fucking brats."

* * *

Everyday for the final year of middleschool, Kayano walked this path, she could tread it with her eyes closed. Glancing down, it was a wonder she didn't wear lines in the cement, she looked back up at the unclouded sky, its scape punctured by Tokyo's buildings spiraling upward. Then she moved her eyes forward and considered the contrasting grey cement and emerald green of the foliage, whispering in the wind. She remembered the buzz of cicadas and the hum of traffic in the distance.

"You're early too," said a familiar voice. It was too low for a girls, but too high to be comfortably be with the boys, but despite the ambiguity Kayano could relax to its sound, set to the offbeat of the insect's hum. The wind blew and it was dry.

"Yeah," Kayano said, but didn't look back, because looking back was _bad_ she just wasn't sure why. She wanted the see the blue of this boy's hair and his eyes and his voice, but if she did, something would break. She would never say his name.

She could feel him now, he caught up to her pace and walked shoulder to shoulder, the accidental brush of their fingers set to the rhythm of their sway. She didn't know what to do so glanced to the sky again, suddenly the clouds were rolling in, and the air was getting heavier.

"It's time for a storm," the blue boy said. This time he grabbed her hand, and it was so visceral, the way soft skin touched hers- the warmth from the body and the smoothness underlying skin- it was so real, even when it shouldn't be, that Kayano woke up with a violence.

She lay paralyzed for a second, the phantom touch still so alive on the space between her fingers that she could almost feel a pulse, until she forced herself to exhale. Why did she keep having dreams like this? As if it were trying to show her what could have, should have been. She covered her eyes with her hands.

"I wonder if I would still be in love him," Kayano said despite herself, she wasn't supposed to _think about him_ anymore.

"Does it matter?" the Akari Yukimara side spoke like staccato, short and to the point. "He's dead, your feelings are worthless."

Haruna Mase chimed in. "Put on that smile and lace up your boots. It's time to put on a show."

She was grateful that she was still in bed because the vertigo came in again, too many voices competing for dominance. She forced herself to meditate and tried to focus on one.

"I was in love too," her Saki said mournfully, and she cringed, her body twisting in sheets.

A new buzz emerged from next to her, as comforting as the cry of cicadas, the computer began to boot itself.

"Kayano-chan," Ritsu's voice filtered in, and Kayano's world began to realign itself. Kayano was good, a strong fighter, nice head on her shoulders. Kayano swung her legs off her mattress, feeling better already.

"Yes Ritsu?" she said as she rubbed the tiredness of the night from her eyes. Her dream already fading into the background, as substantial as dandelion fluff. She felt silly letting herself get carried away in its imprint.

"I believe I found what you were looking for," Ritsu replied.

"Which one?" she asked, her attention swerving to the glow of the screen. The objective was as broad as it was vague, she figured that the silver bullet could come in many forms.

"I've found records of a purchase of a human life for the purposes of scientific experimentation, dated roughly three years ago. It is likely this is the same transaction Yanagisawa made to buy Kurosensei."

That brought the vigor back, Kayano stood up and began to pace. "You'd think he would have gotten rid of the evidence."

"Attempts were made, but computer records are not like paper records, even when deleted, data often remains. He must have attempted to wipe out the evidence before he invested in a competent IT division. Uploading relevant data now."

The computer whirled and chirped in exertion. "And Kayano-chan?"

"Yes."

"Please invest in a better internet connection." Ritsu almost sounded as if she was sulking. Kayano patted the screen in affection like she would a child.

"I'll think about it."

Documents began to pop up in the screen, most of it incomprehensible to her, but she stared intently anyway. She sat down on the rough carpet, watching as numbers and words flew by. _Oh_ , this must be the financial records Ritsu was talking about. From what little she could understand, it showed an exchanged of twenty thousand dollars.

"Is it normal to be that expensive?" Kayano murmured.

"No, even taking into account the different variety of trafficked victims, this is unusually high for a price. I suspect that Yanagisawa payed premium for someone as highly skilled and durable as Kurosensei. I thought it prudent to inform you though, of the nature of this transaction."

"Hm?" She crossed her bare legs.

"Yanagisawa did much of his transactions through a shell company to better hide any illicit activities." She said, then the computer screen zoomed into the statement. "It seems he has been using your family's old company to funnel his money."

Kayano blinked. She didn't know how to feel about that, it should probably have made a bigger impact that a sleezeball like Yanagisawa would devour and dirty every piece of her life. But it felt like nothing, it made an empty sound as the information sank in her chest. Her parents were not terrible people, but they simply were not a part of her life. It was Aguri, a full decade older than her, that practically raised her. Aguri who made her lunch before school, Aguri who encouraged her to follow her dreams, who brushed her hair in the morning, and Aguri who bought her clothes.

Her parents were pragmatics who could really only love one child at a time, and that child was their family name- which was much older and more prestigious than it could financially support. The company Yanagisawa had taken from them was running in name only, one of the failed businesses that they had attempted to regain the wealth they believed they deserved. They had not been unkind, but still were the type of parents that would force an arranged marriage on someone like Aguri, who was too sweet and too self sacrificing to refuse. So when Yanagisawa presented the opportunity, along with buying out their failed business, they acquiesced in a manner natural to her family.

It was almost fitting that he would violate the corpse of her family's name to further his own agenda. Very much like him to not waste any opportunity to be a bastard.

"Well, the engagement makes a little more sense now," she said shedding the personal baggage from it with a shake of her hands. "Do you know where it was sent to?"

"Yes, have you ever heard of the People's Defense Movement?"

"Doesn't ring a bell."

Ritsu brought up the browser and a wikipedia article. "It's a small insurgent group in a small island south west of Japan. Because of the state of their nation, it took awhile to sort out all the necessary information, but reports indicate they make most of their finances in human trafficking. It wouldn't be difficult for them to bribe prison officials into gaining custody of Kurosensei."

"Out of country?" she murmured. She walked to her wall, shaking her head. Photos pinned up, multiple strings and pins attached to various phrases, newspaper clippings placed like cheap wallpaper. "I thought it was the Yakuza."

"Unlikely, the Yakuza does some international sex trafficking, but the majority of their human trafficking is either domestic or simply enforced protection tax on third party traffickers, and it would be unlikely that have access to another country's prisons."

"I'm an idiot," Kayano groaned. She began to unpin pictures of various men she had followed and took down articles surrounding the Yakuza. "Can you do me a favor and print out some articles about the PDM? I didn't even consider..." An entire year of nothing but tracking down wrong leads and not even noticing the rather intimate dealings of her own family's company. She clenched her eyes shut, letting her sort out the information overload. This was... this was salvageable. She could work with this.

Her eyes snapped open. "Is Yanagisawa still doing business with them?"

"According to the bank statements, he is. I've logged some suspicious emails as well, where the recipient is probably not native Japanese, based on the email name and the lack of grammar. I believe that it his contact within the PDM. The communication is not consistent though, the last electric association was well into eight months ago."

She smiled wryly, the sun began to filter in through the off white blinders in slits, highlighting cuts into her room. "So there is some use to me playing the good fiancé." The word fiancé tasted bitter in her mouth. "If I play this right, I can make contact with them as a liaison of Yanagisawa. I'm both his future wife and the heir of the company that's been funneling them money."

She stepped on the newspaper clippings she discarded as she continued to analyze her wall, her eyes lingering on the picture of Kurosensei, one of the few photographs left. He looked comical, even cartoonish, with his wide smile, beady eyes and bright yellow face.

 _Soon._

"What are we hoping to accomplish there?"

Kayano traced Kurosensei's face with the tip of her finger, a sense of responsibility and guilt. "If he's working with terrorist organizations, that can only bring him closer to ruin right? I want to see what he was doing and who he was doing it with."

Her hand dropped. "I want to see where Kurosensei lived too."

Her teacher's legacy was of brokenness, of failure, they left their love where his corpse lay and clothed in dysfunction instead. But there was more to that, warmth, nearly smothered by layers of revenge and anger and sickness. Even if it was just once, she wanted to see where he came from, before she inevitably followed down the path he once walked.

"I can send his contact an email from Yanagisawa's account without anyone knowing," Ritsu replied. "And make accommodations accordingly. Our information is not yet complete though, I have no idea his normal mode of transportation or where they normally meet. What should we do if Yanagisawa becomes suspicious of our absence?"

She waved off the concern dismissively. "I can just insist he meet me during winter vacation a little too persistently. He'll avoid me like the plague. That much is easy. Everything else we'll be flying blind. But if there was no challenge, how would we grow?"

She reached for her phone, her predatory sense had begun to kick in. There was an instinct that took over when she began to zero in a potentially deadly target. It honed her senses until they were sharp enough to cut, it stilled the other names in her head, and adrenaline began to pump as she stared at all the loose colored string on the wall, coming together.

It had been a long time, but it was like riding a bike. You never forget how to be a killer.

* * *

A/N: I very specifically decided to make up a country here, because I didn't know where Kurosensei came from and it was easier than looking into other countries and being offensive.

This chapter almost neared 10,000 words. My hope was that each chapter would be about ~3000 because I have severe editing issues. Last time I had a story with long chapters, editing them would take forever because my first drafts are completely incomprehensible, I've never met a person with worst first drafts than me. So shorter chapters would help alleviate the work. Then I decided that I wanted to put in two POVs, for what is really suppose to be a transitional chapter that I hadn't originally planned on being this long.

But writing Rio is super fun, and dysfunctional Rio even more interesting. Also Chiba and Hayami are being really obvious here, which is strange because I always viewed them as extremely private. But that would make it difficult to write them outside of their own POVs. Instead I characterized them as people who didn't really care about who viewed them but still always kept to themselves. Hayami/Chiba is the otp.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Thanks for the review! As far as the will thing is concerned, I don't know about the JSDF, but I know in the US military you are required or encouraged to write a legal will in basic training. For everyone here, since they are about to be "deployed" it comes standard with their paperwork.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Sugino and Kanazaki are definitely in a relationship, or as close as you can be in a relationship in Project E. There's this sort of dual nature to this pregnancy, this idea that it is at least one made in a happy relationship, but also was used as a strategic maneuver to get Kanazaki away. Thinking about most of the plot points, I'd have to say that most of the story, if not all, would probably end around the time or a little before Kanazaki conceives. Whether or not that's a good thing is where the story takes us. Thanks for the review and feedback as always.

 **Crazy rabbit2** : ty for the review. Kayano, well all of class E, is really stubborn. At this point, Kayano can hear but she doesn't know how to go back. I see Kayano as a character that is very much motivated by her emotions and puts huge stock in the people that she loves. Take them away, and Kayano doesn't so much crumble as she bursts into rage.

Thank you to all who followed and favorited!


	7. Chapter 6: A Time to Perform

_Project End_

Chapter 6: A Time to Preform

-x-

"Oi, we're seriously going through with this crazy shit?" Okano muttered.

Karma ignored her ramblings, sharpening a small shiv he was keeping strapped to his ankle. They all had their telltale shows of nervousness. Karma constantly polished his weapons, Okuda muttered the periodic table under her breath, Rio drank (but since she couldn't she was moving her jaw like she was chewing on air), Maehara bounced his leg and rubbed his hands together, Takebayashi cleaned the lens of his glasses- put them on- only to take them off to polish once again, Sugino tapped his fingers on the ships surface looking like he was going to lose his lunch, and Fuwa ground her teeth in thought as she read the folders over and over again. The constant swaying of the ship didn't make it much better on their nerves.

"The hell man. They're fucking crazy, they didn't give us time to prepare at all."

And apparently Okano didn't shut up.

"She's not exactly wrong," Irina Jelavić said walking in the room, in all her dramatic beauty.

Karma always valued objectivity, and if he were to be honest, Bitch-sensei had always been gorgeous in a blatantly gaudy way, her clothes were meant to exaggerate her curves and emphasize creamy legs a mile long, bright lipstick accentuated full lips, and long, fake lashes framed clear blue eyes. It was useful on the stupid and the weak willed. A god's way of compensating for her personality.

She continued. "It's rare for me to accept a contract that's this sloppily improvised." Irina scanned the crowd and frowned at the line up. "Where's Hayami and Chiba?"

Rio smirked. "Guess."

That was a way to pass the nervousness too, he supposed.

Irina sat down in a chair in front of them, crossing her legs in a way that almost seemed obscene. The ship jerked violently, everyone attempted to steady themselves and Sugino gagged. They were currently two hours in their sail to their destination; Karma didn't know what their ETA would be since they were delayed by a storm. The seas tossed their ship in a fury, lobbing his friends across the floor for the better part of the hours. Sugino couldn't keep anything down in the rocking despite Takeyabashi's best efforts. Karma wouldn't be surprised if the floors and walls stained permanently stained.

Irina didn't look happy. "They send me an espionage mission with Karma and Okuda. What the hell were they thinking?"

There was no maliciousness in her intent, although the disregard mixed with the smell of vomit left a sour taste in Karma's mouth.

Karma spit, he had many talents, performing for idiots was not one of them, especially when said performance required him to pretend to be a scared kid at the behest of a stronger power. Karma didn't enjoy cowering.

Okuda wasn't any better, she was naturally shy and anxiety riddled, combined with her tendency to be too straightforward and socially illiterate. If it had been Karma, he would have changed most of the line up; snipers may have been a good choice but he wouldn't waste two open spots for the same job, and on that note deploying both Karma and Rio was also redundant. They were too alike in their ability to take control and strategize that they could easily trip over each other's shoes. He wasn't even sure what they would need a chemist for. There was a dozen better team compositions that were available, and in the erratic wobbling of the ship, he mentally ran through the lists for distraction.

"I don't think our handlers had anything to do with team formation, which explains why we're so mismatched. The people who know us best weren't picking," Fuwa ruminated. "The person in charge of this field mission is... an unorthodox choice." Karma wondered if Fuwa noticed that Bald-san was unusually high up to be directly managing a mission.

"All fascinating, but right now it's a distraction," Irina said, flinging soft blond hair over her shoulder. "Focus on the task at hand. If it was this hastily thrown together, then it means they're scared about the trail getting cold. I'm getting paid good money for this, so does everybody understand what we're doing?"

Sugino finally spoke up. "Finding the missing agent."

"A simple way of putting it." She flipped through her folder as well, repeating the goals of their operation. "We're infiltrating an insurgent group called the People's Defense Movement, specifically their human trafficking ring. This particular house is occupied by the last known people who our lost Lenore had any contact with. Our main objective is to find any information on our agent Bu, whether or not if his covered was blown, and retrieve him if possible." She closed the file with a snap. "Engaging in combat is an absolute last resort, we should remain as low key as possible."

"And the likelihood of needing said last resort?" Karma questioned with another grind of his weapon.

"Human trafficking is a lucrative business, so it's a dangerous business. It's something I am well acquainted with," She did not further explanation of what 'acquainted' meant. "You can sell a person for a thousand dollars, and if they're smart they can make it back in a week. You, ten, are kids. A little older than the normal premium rate for children, but just young enough to be exciting to a lot of different people. Add to the fact that it's rare for someone from an industrialized country to be trafficked to a poorer country and there's only one reason to go through the trouble."

Rio scraped the dirt from under her fingernail. "Fetishism. We're going undercover as sex slaves."

"You need to work fast children. This is a dark place," Irina warned. "Hopefully we'll make it out before last resorts are necessary, but I wouldn't count on it."

Karma didn't like it. He didn't like being forced into a vulnerable position, and didn't like knowing that he couldn't just kill his way out as soon as he wanted to. He didn't like the way Okuda's eyes were widening, that she was the smallest and mousiest of them all, as well as looking the youngest. She'd be the first to be chosen.

He didn't like it at all. He slid the sharpener across the blade.

"Ne, Bitch-sensei," Okano punctured the silence timidly.

"I swear to god you kids never learned any manners." Irina began to swear in some sort of foreign language, probably Eastern European from the tempo, before Okano continued.

"Why hasn't Karasuma-sensei visited us? We waited for him."

Irina paused her verbal assault. "You really don't know?" Okano shook her head. "These fuckers taught you everything except who you're laying in bed with, huh? Smart I guess, keep your weapons relatively ignorant of all the backdoor politics."

Irina looked thoughtful, putting a well manicured finger to her chin. "If you must know, Karasuma is military intelligence; back when you lot were just Class E your project was under the jurisdiction of the Defense Intelligence Headquarters, they work for the Ministry of Defense, or the DIH. Project End, on the other hand, works for the Public Security Intelligence Agency, the PSIA, under the Ministry of Justice. Both are Japanese intelligence but are two completely different agencies, Karasuma probably didn't have the privileges to do so."

Karma frowned. "Why did we switch agencies?"

"I don't know the details but I can take a guess." Irina leaned back. "Here's a good lesson for you twerps. Bureaucracies are like men; jealous, territorial bitches wanting more than they can handle. Anyone with a lick of common sense would know that the DIH is better suited to handle you punks; they're better equipped, larger, and unlike the PSIA, their budget is confidential, which is probably why they were given the project initially."

Another lurch but they ignored it, hungry to really understand what the hell happened those years ago. They were taught a lot, but never anything like this. "But I don't think you brats understand the severity of what happened when Kurosensei died. He went out in a massive explosion that was visible to the civvies and then a middleschooler mysteriously died. After that failure, it's more than likely the PSIA swept up the mess and demanded control of Class E- and won the chance." She said it with a detached callousness that for some reason reminded Karma of looking into a mirror. He did his best to shake off the feeling, he was not depressed enough to compare himself to Irina.

"How was it a failure?" Sugino choked out, he looked exhausted from just being reminded of what happened. They all found ways to cope, but some did worse than others. "We killed Kurosensei and then convinced everyone it was a terrorist bombing. Isn't that what they wanted?"

"Intelligence is like a painter's job," Irina replied. "If you do the job right, no one even knows there was a mess. They got their target, but to incredible fanfare and collateral damage. When you do this job you have to know, winning in the wrong way is just as bad as losing completely. Given all this and Karasuma direct involvement- he was probably left to shoulder the blame," her face was professional neutral, "if you really want to know what Karasuma is doing, he's probably scrubbing toilets somewhere." The boat jolted with a vengeance. "Bullshit like that is why I only freelance."

No one mentioned Karasuma after that.

Chiba and Hayami returned in the uncomfortable silence, straightening their clothes and looking particularly nonchalant.

"Where the hell did you guys even find a place in a ship like this?" Rio half marveled, half seethed. Chiba and Hayami looked at each other and then looked at her, shrugging. "If I had your damn talent of finding obscure hiding places, I would have brought something to drink."

"You probably want to read over your files again," Irina said standing up after raising a brow to Chiba and Hayami's appearance. How she could stay upright in heels longer than his damn hand was a mystery, perhaps she kept them as a weapon. It certainly looked dangerous enough. "You won't have them when we land, and you want to get your shit straight. Chances are you won't need the cover stories, but some of the freaks out there enjoy getting personal."

Karma's gaze flickered towards Okuda again, but she didn't look any more fazed than usual.

"Be vigilant," Irina said, the first thing she spoke with any bit of the fondness that she once had for them. "But I'll be here, and I will do my best to keep you safe."

"But not at the cost of the mission, right?" Karma's voice was laced with a hint of warning. He liked Bitch-sensei, relative to Project E anyway, but he had long run out his trust.

Irina looked a tad taken back, before returning a bitter smile. "What's this, you kids are professionals now. Kurosensei would be..." Kurosensei would be what... Proud? Surprised? Heartbroken? She looked away. "It wasn't meant to be this way, but hell has a way of creeping up on you."

-x-

The trip ended up taking six hours by boat to finally get to shore, and even when the storm passed as suddenly as it came, Karma had been tired of doing nothing. Stagnation was an enemy as sure as any god of death, and boredom was a drug. Karma stood, his legs felt like pins and needles sticking in his skin, informing him that he had been sitting for far too long. He stretched, flexing his muscles and gripping his hands into fists, willing blood flow.

It was late when he finally stood on land, thankful for stable ground; the sun was slowly sinking into a deceptively calm ocean, and the salt in the air pervaded the island. The country had a natural beauty, probably, but it was difficult to see through the all too obvious misery surrounding it, like looking through a paned window smudged over by dirt and fog. The fishing town they entered was a miserable thing, it stunk of poverty and piss. Whenever Karma glanced at the few villagers that wandered listlessly on their porch, they would immediately divert their eyes and walk into their boarded up houses, shutting the doors and windows; they were afraid of the outside. That didn't bode well.

The road was uneven, years of disuse and neglect showed up as potholes along its length, and everything, _everything_ was rusted over. The whole village was brown, and gray, and unpleasant rusty red. It was a town dying in the worst way possible, slowly, painfully, and in absolute terror of what was going around it. It was a wounded animal, rotting from the inside out.

Who the hell would fight for this?

"There's not much for public transportation in this town," Irina said dusting off her low cut dress; she looked so out of place she could have waltzed off another planet and it would have been less conspicuous. She looked around in some sort of distant nostalgia, as if the scenery had been familiar to her long ago. "But in places like this, we could buy a man's wife right from his arms, someone will have a car."

She shouldered her goose feather jacket closer to her body as the wind blew the cold of winter across the ocean. "There's a lot of Chinese influence here, even the uneducated tend to be bilingual," she informed them as they walked down the road. "I'm assuming at least one of you has taken a basic course in it. If you start to recognize what their saying, play ignorance. People like to talk when they don't think you can understand."

"You there," she said in Cantonese, she waved down a bony figure leaning on a beatdown truck with chipped paint and a bumper swaying- barely attached, and Karma thought _well shit_ because he was a lot better with his Mandarin. The older man turned to them, chewing slowly and eyeing them like they were murderers waiting to happen. He would be right in this case.

Karma couldn't keep up with most of the conversation, but she was negotiating a price for a ride to a closer city. The old man's eyes went from her face, to her breasts, to the rest of the kids. He understood what was going on the surface level- a rich woman herding a bunch of scared teenage foreigners, but he didn't really care, his eyes went back to Irina's chest.

She turned back to the kids, and said in a stern voice which was mostly for show, "He said he was going to take us. This is the real deal kids, we aren't messing around with instructors, and we don't have Kurosensei backing you. Look alive." Everyone piled in the back of the truck, huddling together for warmth against the costal wind whipping at their faces. When they did that, they really did must have looked pathetic and Karma already hated it. _This goddamn mission_ , it would be easier if they gave him a straightforward assassination. Okuda scooted closer and curled smaller so it was like she put her head on Karma's shoulder.

She shivered. _Really hate this mission._

They crossed into night's threshold as they drove on, and even the stars seemed dimmer on the island. The man flickered his headlights and Karma watched as shadows bounced off the landscape. The sparse land transformed from long roads to something more cluttered, walls of buildings surrounding them and the roads were wider as more cars began to swerve in and out, with no particular adherence to any laws or safety.

The truck shifted left, running half its tires straight on the sidewalk.

"Get out," he heard the driver say is sharp Cantonese, he looked downright pissed, even when Irina generously compensated him. He snatched the bills with a scowl.

The kids piled out as fast as they could, standing awkwardly on the sidewalk. The entire city was a slum, trash was thrown on the street and abandoned buildings decayed in the open.

She thanked the old man curtly, not necessarily offended by his behavior, but he didn't reply. In a lone second, he managed to tear his eyes from her chest long enough to look at Karma and his friends one last time. This time there was a flash of pity. Or was it shame? It didn't matter, because he twisted his key and drove off as fast as his worn tires would take him.

"Come along, this shit infested city is filled with parasites. I wouldn't want to get in a fight before we get there." _And blow our cover_.

Where they were going wasn't quite in the confines of the city, it was located near the edge, the area almost completely abandoned, half to the ghosts of nature and half to the bullet holes that lingered in the plaster. Karma could see unwashed blood on the cement, it soaked deep into the foundation until it was part of the scenery. Graffiti on the walls announced PDM's dominance in the area.

"Irina," a jovial voice called out. Two identical men, twins, came with arms out invitingly, their side arms glittered from the light reflecting from the windows. They were young, in their early or mid twenties, and looked better off than the rest of the islanders they met. The one with his hair pinned out of his eyes smiled wide, he looked particularly like he was enjoying life, but when he saw Karma's gaze he smiled and turned to show off his firearm. Karma resisted the urge to bury his shiv in his neck, he didn't react well to subtle power plays, he tended to follow up with decisive violence. "

The other twin had a serious expression and even more serious tone. "It's been a long time. I thought you were out of this business," he said, at least Karma thought he said that. He had to do a lot of guess work with what little he managed to understand, but Karma learned fast. Hopefully Rio was better at picking up languages.

"My business is money, you say you have some for me, and I'm here."

The happy twin circled Rio, letting his fingers slide through her long blond hair like he was flirting, and she cringed away.

"You ...good merchandise." Trying to translate and look as if he wasn't paying attention was an uphill battle.

"Everything I do is quality," Irina said dryly. "Invite me in already." They herded everyone in, and the conversation went so fast that Karma didn't bother to try. While Irina attempted to negotiate with the serious twin, the other one continued to ghost around Rio, like a cat stalking its prey. He touched her face almost lovingly, down the neck, and back through her hair.

"Pretty," he muttered in awkward Japanese, just loud enough for her to hear. He sat down on an old couch and pulled her to his lap. Rio cowered for show, but Karma could see a twitch in her fingers that told him she was about to rip his eyes out and shove the nearest sharp implement down his throat. "Pretty, pretty."

"Hands off the merchandise, Lin," Irina scolded half heartily. Lin gave a shit eating grin, but released his hands in surrender and Rio stepped away quickly. Irina went back to negotiating furiously with the other one, hands thrown up in the air and speaking in rapid fire. Lin was obviously disinterested in any business talk and turned on the couch, lazing off the back with his arm swinging in leisure.

"Welcome," he said in Japanese, then continued on in Cantonese, not really expecting for them to understand. If Karma concentrated, he could make out some of what he said. "Life is hard, so smile while you can!" Everyone stared at him stupidly, and Lin giggled like a hyena, this time speaking too fast and punctuated with too many laughs to make out cleanly. He reached out again, this time with full intent.

He fisted Rio's hair.

"Lin," his twin crowed in annoyance.

"We always break them in this way," Lin complained, licking his lips.

Irina strolled over, smacking him lightly on the head, her Chinese was as smooth as her Japanese and Karma couldn't help but wonder how many languages she actually spoke fluently. "I take the effort to bring you young, Japanese virgins and you're going to fuck it up for me? Do you know how much they're worth?"

Lin looked up with a pout that made him almost look as young as them. "Stingy."

Irina looked back at the other twin she had been talking with, if had sounded as if they were in deadlock so they stopped arguing all together. She rolled her eyes and turned back to her kids. "Come," she said in Japanese, shepherding them towards a door. "This is your room for now. That's right all ten of you, don't give me that look." It was cramped, blankets that more resembled rags were scrawled on the splintered floor. There was not much else, not even a lamp to help them stumble in the dark. "I'll come for you in the morning."

She shut the door heavily and they heard it lock. It was for show, they could easily break the flimsily made frame down and lock picking was second nature to them. But it was better this way, if their captors didn't expect them to leave then moving around undetected would be easier.

Finally out of the gazes of their would-be keepers, Karma and the others relaxed, their faces slipped from fear and confusion to trademark stoicism. It was time to work.

Okano bounced on her heels and the floor squeaked in protest. "Stupid crappy made houses. It creaks every time you fart, it'll make searching a lot noisier." She looked out the window, there was no moon and no lights came from the scarce buildings around them, most likely abandoned. "Well at least it's too dark to see anything. For both them and us."

Sugino fiddled with the window which had been nailed shut.

"Did you get what they were saying?" Karma asked Rio. "I could only make out half of it."

She nodded. "Yeah, from what is sounded like, Bitch-sensei was trying to sell us for a lot more than we're worth, she's probably deliberately trying to draw out the bargaining and give us more time. That one guy looked pissed though, I'm not sure how safe it is for her to try to screw with them."

The dossier had told them that this particular duo was unpopular, and often got into fights with both business partners and other members of their own group. Dealing with bad tempers was always tricky, they added another level of unpredictability.

"Anything about our missing guy?"

"She was trying to fish for some information, definitely," Rio replied. "She said she wasn't sure if just two guys could handle ten kids, and asked if there was anybody else around. They didn't say anything but the guy looked sort of pissed after that. I think she hit a nerve."

Okano and Sugino successfully pried open the window, Okano turned to them. "I'm going to check this place out, nothing too fancy." She flipped to the other side of the window, hanging off the edge and planting her feet on the siding. The house moaned at the intrusion. "Fuck." She winced at the loudness. "This damn house... be back soon." And she disappeared into the darkness. Sugino looked after her, fear barely reflecting in his eyes.

"Should I follow her?"

"You'll just slow her down," Maehara said, and Sugino deflated, he looked miserable and guilty. Maehara glanced at Rio and Karma with worry strewn in his face, Karma knew he was the only one who knew why Sugino acted half dead but was in no mood to distract his other teammates with the news. He shook his head and Maehara tried a forced, "You know I don't mean it that way. Okano has the best agility out of all of us, we'd all slow her down."

It hadn't helped, Sugino slowly slid down the wall and cradled his head in his hands. He wasn't okay, the mission hadn't taken his mind off Kanzaki's situation, all it had done was stretch him thin. Karma went into this mission worrying about Okuda and her social anxiety, but the entire time but she had been holding up astonishingly well, it was Sugino who was ripping at the seams.

"Is he going to be okay?" Rio asked with weariness in her voice.

Maehara sighed. "I'll take care of him. You have your own shit to worry about. You have an admirer."

"Ugh," Rio flipped her hair like it was just a minor inconvenience. "I can handle him. If worse comes to worse, I've been trained for this."

Maehara looked sick at the very thought of it. Rio laughed at his expression.

"You act like you haven't fucked someone to get information yet."

"Not like this," he winkled his nose. "This is different."

"Chivalry isn't as becoming as you think," Rio replied. "At least he's pretty attractive." Then mournfully added, "Twins. I had _dreams_ about twins. Way to ruin a good fetish."

"Mm. Twins," Maehara agreed.

The conversation was steering dangerously into stupid territory, so Karma walked away, barely avoiding Hayami and Chiba who were wrapped up in themselves. Everything that could be entangled was, his head on her shoulder and her hair tickling his chest, their fingers intertwined, their limbs wrapped around each other. They weren't doing anything but resting and it still looked a little obscene.

Dull thumps sounded close enough to rattle the floor beneath their feet and everyone stopped, looking at the door. More solid bangs but it came from the outside, and a second later Okano was crawling back. Everyone relaxed.

"I think we're good for the rest of the night," Okano said. "They're drinking in the living room." Rio whined about the unfairness of her forced sobriety in the background. "I did a fast look around and there isn't anyone else in this house, for now at least."

 _But judging from what Rio said, they definitely reacted to the idea that someone was here_ "Anything else?"

"They're well-armed, junk food in the cupboards, expensive phones for a toilet of a country like this. You'd be surprised by how clean the house is," Okano said squatting. "One of them is definitely a neat freak, and it's probably not Nakamura's new boyfriend. I also found some pills. Not enough to sell, so it's all probably recreational." She tossed two plastic bags to Takebayashi, who missed it in the darkness. "Nice hands, feet."

"Maybe don't throw things in near zero visibility," he grumbled, examining them.

"Can you tell what they are?"

"Not all of them," he confessed. He opened the bag and took one out. "I'm pretty sure this is Rohypnol."

"What's that?" Sugino asked.

Okuda answered for him. "A date rape drug."

"What do they need those for, it's not like they'd take no for an answer anyway."

Maehara tapped his foot against the wall. "It helps them break the person in." When they looked at him he simply said, "I've worked some of the circles in Tokyo before this, it's happens a lot over there."

"Valium," Takebayashi continued on, squinting at another bag.

"That one was stashed in a room that I think is being used for storage, buried under a whole bunch of other crap," Okano said. "I don't think it's been touched for awhile."

"Anti-anxiety medicine?" Okuda shifted closer to Takebayashi. "None of them had any tells of anxiety."

"Maybe they're just addicted?" Rio offered.

"Abuse of prescription meds is a lot more common than illegal drugs, but only in places where there's easy access. Here, in a country where the medical access is precarious at best, they wouldn't bother with this," Takebayashi pondered out loud. "They certainly don't look like addicts."

"Any possibility our missing guy had a problem with anxiety?" Karma asked. If he did and smuggled pills out of Japan to help him through his mission, it would certainly explain their presence.

"Wouldn't you if you had to live here?" he snorted. "I think we found the footsteps Bu left behind, now we need to know where he went."

"Well, if his drugs are here, then he should be have been too," Karma replied, looking out the open window. "Give it a few hours for tsukkomi and bokke fall asleep before we start looking again, this time thoroughly, no more than three man cells. Okano should take Takebayashi and Fuwa with her." Fuwa was probably the best at piecing together clues for a mystery and Takebayashi had enough medical knowledge just in case.

"Can I go instead of Takebayashi?" Okuda Manami spoke up timidly, in practice she would have just enough medical knowledge to sub for him. "There are a few things I want to look for."

Karma's lips twisted downward. " Takebayashi is better at maneuvering around."

"Being a little better doesn't mean much when both of us are crap at it, just let her go." Takebayashi shrugged.

Irritation wormed its way into his chest, he wasn't in the mood for people questioning his moves. "It's safer for all of us if she stays."

Rio let out a quick, sardonic laugh, earning a "shut up" kick from Maehara. "Safe he says. Stop babying her, Karma, when the fuck have you ever cared about safe?"

Denying the ludicrous idea that he was babying Okuda would only fuel the fire. "I liked it better when you were drunk."

"So did I."

"She's still staying."

Rio shook her head disbelievingly and Okuda's head bent in a mixture of defeat and embarrassment, like she was ashamed to have had ask anything at all, and he watched as the last of her fledgling confidence drained right out of her.

"O-okay," she stammered as she stared at her own fidgeting hands. She quickly shuffled to the farthest corner away from him, turning her face to hide in the shadows.

Takebayashi squatted next to her and they engaged in a quiet conversation, probably about what she had wanted to find in the house, possibly to commiserate on how an asshole like Karma just stole the role of leadership that he hadn't even wanted in the first place. She kept her eyes at Takebayashi, or the ceiling, or the window, anywhere Karma wasn't. If they hadn't been locked in a room, he suspected she would have made a break for it across the island.

She was so painfully obvious about everything, it would be impossible for Karma he was being avoided, she really was no good at being subtle. He'd sigh, but he had too much on his plate to worry about entertaining anyone's hurt feelings, much less hers. He willed him back into the comfortable mental distance. He was being too open recently, having him and his friends, _colleagues_ , suddenly in the throes of a dangerous mission, trapped together in cramped spaces for agonizing periods of time could have that effect. He needed to rebuild those walls he had painstakingly made this past year and a half.

Distance made problems easier to understand. And when he understood, he could dissect and conquer them.

So Karma closed his eyes to everything else and he planned.

* * *

Kayano was walking on a graveyard; this was the land where the man that taught her to be the person she was today once lived, and grew, and killed.

 _Kurosensei_ , she prayed.

"Akari Yanagisawa-san," said the man in the car. She resisted the urge to strangle him right there, there was equal parts disgust for the leathery face gentleman who uttered those words, and a very real self-hatred for letting herself become attached to _him_. But she quelled that desire because despite her loathing of the very idea of being married to him, it would make things easier.

She could easily separate Akari Yukimura, loving sister and woman of vengeance, from Akari Yanagisawa, a woman who kissed scum and made friends with slavers. So Akari Yanagisawa-san bowed in greeting to the man who could have passed for her grandfather if not for the face full of scars and a chunk missing from his left ear.

"Just Akari. We're friends now," she replied as she wrapped her fur-lined coat tighter. She dressed wealthy, with skins of animals around her body and diamonds around her neck and on her ring finger, hoping that the smell of money overpowered her youth. She was playing this dangerously blind, even Ritsu could not make it with her, she was unable to downgrade her program and keep it useful enough to justify downloading it on her phone. If Kayano needed anything, she still had her texts, but text walls didn't stop bullets.

"Then Akari-chan," he said as she glided into the seat next to him. "Welcome to hell." He spoke Japanese with rough familiarity, his accent was thick but it matched well with his time worn voice, low and deep from a lifetime of experiences.

She closed the door and he eyed her up, calculating. He looked at her face, then her jewels and furs. He laughed.

"Koutarou likes them young," he said. _He knows Yanagisawa well enough to be on first name basis._

"He doesn't. Koutarou's taste is pretty, regardless of age," she said with a confidence that had him laughing again.

"And arrogant I suppose," he said with an amused mirth.

Arrogance, she's been surrounded by a lot of that lately. "Confidence," she corrected.

He said something in Chinese that she couldn't catch, but it was mocking. _Let him mock,_ she could kill him three different ways from this position if she could be bothered. Fools are better left to wallow in their own mistakes until they drown in them. Akari Yanagisawa, she supposed, really was a cold bitch.

"So Koutarou wants another person for his science, eh? He's a twisted son of a bitch."

 _You have no idea_. But instead Akari Yanagisawa's mouth twisted at the insult to her fiancé.

"It's a compliment. When you sleep with devils, you learn to appreciate these things," the man cajoled. "How many does he want?"

 _He talks as if I'm buying fruit at a grocery store_. "It depends on the price."

"He's always been like that, eh? He's aggressive, but spontaneous, grabs whatever thinks goes well. I'm surprised he let you choose," he said glancing at her. Akari's back straightened, she fixed a proud look on her face.

"I am going to be his wife. I should be able to do these things." She sniffled indignantly. If she couldn't get him to respect her as an equal customer, she may as well play into the naïve little girl aspect. He was taking it too, because now he looked at her like she was just a child that everyone was humoring.

"Right, right. Is anyone okay?"

Here it was; if she was going to learn anything about Yanagisawa, she would have to start with his habits. "I wasn't given a strict guideline. I was wondering what he usually buys."

"Oooh," he said in thought. Then he smiled. "Well, if you don't have anything specific in mind, I know a shop that has something suitable to his recent taste. We have a new shipment you should look at. We don't have any appointments but they can't complain about more business."

She continued to probe. " _Recent_ taste? Does his taste change a lot? I've only... been engaged for a few months."

He patted her head with an almost grandfatherly affection. His hands were calloused and large, scars and scratches littered them like veins, and she could smell a faint mixture of gunpowder and blood. They were hands that invited death, she could oblige to return the favor if the worst came to pass.

 _I am Akari Yanagisawa._ So she just pouted and flicked his hand off her head.

"Your husband is a real patron of the arts. Can't say what he wants but knows it when he sees it. I can appreciate a man with instinct, around this island it's a survival skill. You child, wouldn't last a second here. In this country, you wake up to eat, bathe in blood, and if you're lucky you live to sit down for supper. People from Japan are still sucking on their mother's tits at your age." He paused before giving an incredibly insincere, "Sorry for my language."

"You don't know me." Both Akari's said that.

He laughed again, in the same fatherly patronizingly way and they drove the rest of the way in silence.

"This is it." Even in midday the neighborhood was still cast in long shadows. She wondered if Kurosensei grew up in a house like this, broken and lonely and less inviting than a prison cell. He had once said his hometown fostered killers and she could believe it now, it was a cradle for corpses. Everywhere here she could see only two different kinds of people- killers and victims.

Yanagisawa belonged here as both. There was no damn justice in the world, where Kurosensei dragged himself from this horror to scratch and claw and bleed his way into redemption, and Yanagisawa was born into money and privilege and ripped Kurosensei away from his atonement.

Well, if there was no justice, then she would make her own. Perhaps when she killed him, it would be when she brings him here. Let the murderer of Kurosensei draw his last breath on the land he was born.

"This way little-miss. Sorry if it isn't as pretty as your house," he said, hurrying her through the door. She obliged. She wanted to see what "his taste" was, and if it was exploitable.

"The last two times I've done business with him, it's always been with people like this," his explanations were purposefully vague as he opened the door.

A young man in his twenties greeted them at the door, he blocked their entry, considering her and her coat with a wary glare before giving the old man a hard look. _They aren't friends_.

"Jun!" the old man greeted, and continued on in another language. They began to argue, but the old man condescendingly laughed at him much like he laughed at her, and pushed him out of the way with a wide sweep. The man he called Jun reflexively reached for his gun, but stopped short, it was a flimsy bluff no one would fall for.

The old man turned to her. "Never mind him, young punks always thinking they should get treated like kings. Back in my day we would have just shot them in the head and be done with them. The times change, now all the young ones think too much about spreading their 'message' but don't have a clue what they are saying." He rambled, shaking his head. It reminded her of the old men in the mom and pop restaurants, cradling their sake and complaining about the new generation, while wistfully reminiscing about the good old days.

Except everyone here wanted to hang each other.

Jun was particularly uptight looking, scowling as she walked by. "Xiăojiě," he addressed her, but the elder man shook his head and explained something. It didn't make him happy because his head snapped to her in thinly veiled mistrust.

"Rìběn?" he asked, raising a brow. When Akari didn't reply he impatiently barked, "Japanese?" She nodded her head and his face darkened. She suppressed the impulse to run or kill, he was on to something, what she wasn't sure.

"There's a lot of business with the Japanese as of late." The older man took off his hat and unwound his scarf. "He's getting nervous. Paranoid morons. You think teenagers and long term customers are out to get you? Use your common sense." He must have repeated what he said in the other language because Jun was turning red with indignation.

She wasn't interested in their fight so she promptly ignored them. _If I can expose that Yanagisawa is working with human traffickers, maybe some of his buyers will pull their contracts. It would definitely hurt him financially, and then he wouldn't be able to keep up with some of his defenses. But… Kurosensei became well known by at least the government and everyone turned a blind eye_.

She stopped when she spotted them, her spine straightened and she stifled a gasp.

 _What the FUCK is Karma doing here?!_

It was like someone had suddenly dumped a bucket of ice water over her head, her insides were colder and stiffer than the winter winds outside. Of the dozens of scenarios she prepared for herself, this wasn't one of them. Her friends mirrored her shock, Karma and Manami-chan hid their surprise the worst.

But she wouldn't mess up here; she quickly controlled her face and willed everyone else to do the same.

"Look at them," the old man laughed, slapping his knee and kneeling down next to Okuda, who looked most like a gaping fish with her mouth open. "Didn't think people their age would actually buy one of 'em." He smiled warmly at the kids in front of him. "You kids are Japanese right? This pretty girl here is too, maybe if you are real good, she'll take you back home."

"Uh-uh," Manami stammered, gripping her skirt, not knowing what to say. Kayano adored Manami, when she reflected fondly on the old days, the simplest memories of their quiet talks at each others desks were the ones she missed the most, but here and now, it was Manami's face she last wanted to see. This was the wrong place for her in every way. Kayano needed to act quickly.

"My husband would like a smarter one," Akari Yanagisawa said self importantly and then forcibly took his attention by stomping her feet. "So this is what you mean by taste? I told you he doesn't care about age."

"Ah, right, right. But the last transaction we had was also someone around your age. Men of a certain age eventually thirst for things that make them feel younger, it's nothing personal. I never understood it much, I can't imagine me with anyone but my old woman." The older man moved his attention. "You said he likes them pretty. What about this one? Nice red hair, nice face." He pointed to Karma, who's narrowed his eyes threateningly.

The air thinned.

 _Godamn Karma, and his stupid fucking killing intent_.

He didn't like being pointed out, much less being treated like cattle. She marched over to Karma and grabbed his chin roughly, forcing it up and digging her nails in his skin. She pretended to look him over while silently telling him to calm the hell down and not mess this up. "He's pretty," she admitted. "But not my taste. Too stupid." Karma gave a strained smirk at her in defiance that promised he would get her back. Despite the atmosphere she couldn't resist the urge to tease him, and when she released his chin she gave him a condescending pat on the cheek. You can try.

Regardless of the somewhat friendly threat, it worked. He was as pacified as he could be now, his murderous atmosphere wasn't quite as noticeable and she could move on.

She studied everyone in the room, they were all lined up against the wall, looking disheveled and worn out. She had seen Karma, then Manami-chan, Takebayashi, Okano, and Maehara at least once since she escaped, asking for various favors. Hayami and Chiba, who were cuddling together like they were looking for warmth in a storm, and the ever thinking Fuwa, though, had been completely absent in her life, and something stuck in her throat when they eyed each other.

Looking at them like this, like merchandise in the window of a shop, was surreal, they looked like strangers. _Has it really been just over a year?_ Surely it had been a lifetime ago.

Funny how assassination is what brought them all together again. She turned her heel and spotted Sugino, shrunk so far back into the corner his presence was almost erased. His expression was so utterly defeated that Kayano knew it couldn't be an act. She remembered Kanzaki, and for a second became furious that anyone would force him here at a time like this. He was breaking down right in front of her.

"Do I have to choose now?" she asked, careful not to let her eyes linger too long on one person.

"Take your time. It's not everyday you buy your first person. Make sure it's worth it, someone you can play with in more ways than one."

Another man came in the room from the stairs, he looked like a copy of Jun, but without the overly strict apprehensiveness. He came in with a spring in his step and his hands merrily shoved in his pockets. When the twin looked at her, he blinked, then asked her a question.

Jun replied in her stead, discomfort audible in his voice. His brother took the explanation bouncing off his feet, not sharing his brother's obvious tension. He wandered over to Rio and crouched in front of her, crossing his arms and saying in broken Japanese, "No, please." Then he giggled at himself, putting his arm around her shoulders, bringing her closer. He would have looked like a normal college student flirting with his friends, had it not been for Rio visibly recoiling.

Kayano's said nothing. She had no idea why her friends were here, but it meant something big. She doubted they were really captured, the ten of them they could have easily taken the two down. What concerned her was she had no idea what their mission was and how she might screw it up and endanger them.

She wondered if it would be a good idea to take one of them with her, Rio was in obvious danger with one of the members, Manami was no good at acting and might blow their cover, and Sugino wasn't emotionally ready to deal with anything much less this. On the other hand, she might be screwing something up for them, and herself.

Choosing now meant her business was done and she would leave without learning anything of importance.

A shout came from outside and Jun strode angrily to the doors, grumbling towards the older man.

"What's going on?" she asked, allowing the concern to take a part of her tone.

"Ah, I just invited someone," the old man said sighing. "And this young man is whining. But what's so bad about accommodating friends after a hard night of fighting. Sometimes they just want a good fuck, sorry again for my language. I'm sure they just want to try something exotic once, not everyday you see the Japanese here."

"I haven't chosen yet," Akari burst out, "You're not going to let them do anything until I have my pick, right?" But despite her protests, more people entered, it was a cell of the PDM, six or seven men congregated. They eyed her greedily before the elder man waved them off, pointing to her friends.

 _More, people, shit._

The old man smiled when he went to embrace one of the members of the cell, someone who looked like a younger version of himself, the same sunken eyes and strong jaw with dark eyes. "You get the pleasure of meeting my son." He slapped his back in affection, and his son good naturedly pulled him off. "I taught him better than these dumb shits. He has a vice or two as well, likes whores more than lovers, but is a good man otherwise. Is too greedy though, I buy him a a good boy and he still spends all his money on young men."

The old man gazed at his son in adoration and his son leered at the wall of kids, his eyes settling on Maehara.

His father continued. "You said you wanted to see your husband's taste, yes? My son has the boy I bought from Koutarou."

Kayano's eyes widened. "He sells people to you, too?"

"He occasionally sells back- calls them his failures. Most of them are too far gone to be of use, but this one is special. I am surprised he thinks of him as a failure. Ah, here he comes. Jiang, hurry, hurry. Meet our customer."

A boy entered. The world stilled.

Kayano did her best. She did her _fucking_ best. She managed to smoothly cover up her surprise when she saw Karma and the others. She kissed Yanagisawa and didn't strangle him on the spot. She chased and fought and sweat.

Kayano didn't slip off her mask in even in the most dire of situations, she had perfected her craft to a fault. Nothing hindered her, except for occasional memories of _him._

Kayano did her best. Akari did her best. All of her names, they did their best until their head pounded and blood poured from open wounds.

And when she saw the boy they called Jiang walk in, with long blue hair that fluttered down past his shoulders, piercing blue eyes that passed over her in disinterest, and a face so familiar that she thought she was thirteen again, she felt her "best" wither and fade. Die as agonizingly as Kurosensei did that night, in the grass fields of the mountains.

She looked at the boy she once loved and saw blue. Then, she saw red.

* * *

 **A/N:** So Nagisa is back and originally, I wrote this story two different ways, Nagisa "dying" and coming up in this chapter, or Nagisa never dying so that I could build up Kayano and Nagisa's relationship, but with the degree of Kayano's mental descent, it made more sense that Nagisa being gone. I think I like it better this way.

On some technical notes: The PSIA and the DIH are real Japanese intelligence agencies and some of the basic facts are easily google-able, ie, the DIH having a confidential budget and the PSIA being smaller and what Ministries they fall under. Everything else, of course, all being written as drama, which is dangerous because it shows how little I know but that's fine. There's very little I could find out about the PSIA and the DIH for this story, and well, that's probably the point.

While the country they are visiting and the PDM is made up for simplicity and for the sake of not accidentally offending anyone, I had them all speak Chinese because making up a language would be strange and I a long time ago, I tried to learn it. Writing this, however, made me realize how little I remember of any Chinese, so I kept it to a minimum afterwards.

 **Autistic-Grizzly** : Thank you for the review! And now Nagisa really is alive, I hope I didn't spoil anything in my previous chapter. THere's a lot I didn't make clear in the last chapter, but Project E isn't targeting Yanagisawa, but they are targeting a small group that happens to be doing business with them, as Kayano accidentally found out. Project E doesn't actually know this, and it will probably have consequences in the future regarding how Project E sees Yanagisawa. As of now though, he's not on their radar.

 **Crazy rabbit2:** Thanks for the review. I do think that one of the more interesting things about writing with a such a dark situation is that you get to see everyone coping mechanisms, and how they react to grief. The mangaka once said that Sugino was the most like a normal middleschooler, and I totally see it, and I can see how a normal kid would come out of having his mentor and best friend killed, and in turn he was the one that couldn't handle it the most. Sometimes when writing, you don't even mean to give them a certain quirk, it comes naturally when writing characters under stress.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** I've just finished writing an upcoming Chiba/Hayami POV when you asked that question. It's short, but anything for the otp. *fist pump* Yeah, I feel like Chiba and Hayami are already incredibly private characters that play their cards close to their chest, and while open displays of affection are kind of out of character, I hoped that maybe writing their relationship as the reason they got through everything would be good justification. They still don't talk about it or anything, but they don't really talk to anyone outside of each other.

Rio and Karma are at weird odds, because they are so alike that they work seamlessly together, but this whole situation with Project E has also created a tension between them that they both acknowledge, but just sort of ignore. I mean, some people would get along with a copy of themselves, and some people would fight. They got along fine until Kurosensei happened. Thank you so much for your feedback and comments!

Thank you to anyone who favorited/followed, I hope you enjoyed it.


	8. Chapter 7: A Time for a Storm

**Project End**

Chapter 7: "A Time for a Storm"

-x-

All these surprises were doing their damn hardest to get the best of Karma, and he was sick of it. He already had his hands full with being sold into a sex trafficking ring, Sugino's dwindling stability, Rio's idiotic glares, and now Kayano was here, playing dress up. He had to hand it to the universe, he hadn't expected this. So screw the universe.

Kayano must not have been expecting them either because he spotted a half a second of rigidness in her posture, before she covered it with a poised continuing of her stride. Karma might begrudge her relentlessness fixation on throwing herself at the cross of tragedy, but he could not deny she was talented, give credit where credit was due. He only hoped that the rest of his team had the skills to keep up with her.

Fucking hell, this new turn of events didn't help the fact that he was working on two hours of sleep, his joints creaking from sleeping on thin rags on dirty floors. They spent most of the night quietly scouring the house for any scrap of information left behind.

They found little, outside of Jun's impeccable neat and orderliness and Lin's contrasting hoarding, his spaces filled with foreign films and magazines. It would have looked like an ordinary house, had it not been for the stock pile of weapons stowed away in the closet. Karma debated whether or not to take some of them, but seeing Jun's strictness, he was likely to notice a gun or two were missing. Karma compromised with taking something they might overlook, a smoke grenade here, a knife there.

He split the team to maximize the few hours they had alone, Karma brainstormed with Fuwa, Okano, and Maehara about the possibilities of Bu disappearance, and Rio was in charge of Takeyabashi, Chiba, Hayami, and Okuda, who began to rig the house just in case the worst came to pass.

Fuwa claimed that there was evidence of another person living here, but they still had yet to conclusively prove if it had been their Agent Bu, and what had happened to the missing roommate. All traces left were cold, under a layer of neglect and dust.

Truth be told, Rio and Karma should have switched groups, Karma was infinitely better at thinking aggressively and planning for attacks, and Rio had more patience than Karma to talk bounce ideas off of others. Which, if he was being honest, "more patient than Karma" is a pretty an easy accomplishment. But Okuda hadn't been comfortable with him ever since he objected to her going with Okano on their search mission. It said a lot to Karma that she was able to sit through being sold to strangers, but couldn't even stand next to Karma with dissolving into uncontrollable shakes.

"Fix it," Rio had demanded. But Karma wasn't sure how, he had done nothing wrong. And he wasn't about to waste his type fixing problems caused by other people's imagination. There was enough real problems to bulldoze through.

Like Kayano's mysterious presence.

He tried to work out if this sudden turn of events would be in his favor or a hindrance. It was hard to tell, but he knew at least Kayano wouldn't be the one to blow her cover. She wouldn't be all the way here, away from her target, unless she wanted something. And when she wanted something, she would pursue it with single minded and obsessive determination. If that was inline with what they wanted, all the better. If it wasn't...

The old man that accompanied her also spoke in Japanese. He didn't know if it was comforting being able to understand him with ease, or it made him feel more vulnerable. "You kids are Japanese right? This pretty girl here is too, maybe if you are real good, she'll take you back home."

It reaffirmed his conclusion that she came as a buyer, however she pulled a stunt like that off. She was here to buy them, to be specific. Karma watched the old man crouch down to Okuda, who was not hiding her shock well at all. Luckily looking scared and confused went well with their situation, although watching the old man leer over as she shrank back made his lip curl.

Maybe Kayano could "buy" Okuda and take her somewhere she would be safe and not a liability. Or Sugino.

His mind wandered until the old man shoved a sausage finger at him like he was a spectacle. "You said he likes them pretty. What about this one? Nice red hair, nice face."

Karma's hackles rose, he didn't move but he shifted his gaze towards the old man, a promise of pain began to sharpen in his eyes. _He likes them pretty_ , the man said, but Karma hated this shit show, hated that when people saw him they said things like "pretty" and "scared" when all it would take was a few blinks of their eye to have them on their knees, broken, in front of him. Karma was a force to be reckoned with, and he wanted them to know it. A rude comment began to form on the tip of his tongue but a hand roughly seized his chin and forced him to break the rising killing intent.

Kayano peered at him down her nose with loose interest down, it was a decidedly un-Kayano look, full of snobbery and a feeling of judgement. He felt her nails dig into the skin of his chin, as if to reprimand him for falling into a trap.

"He's pretty. But not my taste. Too stupid."

That was a definite jab at him, a challenge even, but it had done what it was meant to; draw his attention away from his source of irritation and bring him back to his senses. Kayano released her grip and he let his trademark smirk slip. He'd get her back later for the backhanded comment, once they were both out of this mess.

She let him go, unimpressed. A sudden commotion outside caught his attention, and he inwardly swore. The older man was telling Kayano that more people were coming. Groups like the PDM didn't work like formal militaries. They worked in cells, they had a vague hierarchy constructed from personalities and resources, but they mostly moved independently, coming together only occasionally.

He had considered a possible the twins would meet up with more of their peers, but that was a worst case scenario that he hoped he could avoid. _Shit_.

Jun fumed, shouting at the group and crossing his arms. Karma glanced at Rio who stared back, they both knew this was bad but they couldn't speak because Lin was huddling near her, playing with her hair in amusement.

The twins and the new men weren't on friendly terms. Jun was the kind of guy that rubbed everyone the wrong way, and Lin was the kind of person that exasperated problems. That could fall in their favor, he just needed to know if that particular weakness could be exploited in the right way. Or if this might explain Bu's disappearance and his cover was never blown, he was just a victim of inner discord. Or if Jun's reputation would bite them in the ass because it made already tenuous situations a lot more unpredictable.

There was a clatter, Kayano's bag slipped from her shoulder and fell to the floor. She looked dumbfounded, eyes wide and mouth parted, her arms hung lamely at her side, as if all her bones melted away. Karma followed her line of sight.

Sugino audibly gasped, and Karma couldn't even fault him for it. He might have done it as well but he suspected he stopped breathing. _Nagisa._

It was weird, really godamned weird because Karma was over it. He threw away his anger and sadness and shouldered his way through his new life. Nagisa shouldn't be able to get to him now.

Karma was paralyzed.

Karma knew for a fact that Nagisa was dead, dead but standing, blinking, breathing in front of him. Men closer to monsters called him Jiang, and dead Nagisa responded with blank eyes, and that was fucked, because even more wrong than Nagisa being alive is him being called by a different name.

"Akari?" the old man frowned at Kayano's strange behavior.

The world re-righted itself and Karma dropped all pretenses, screw this playing the weak man, it was never his strength anyway. He grabbed Rio's arm, forcibly dragging her out of her own slack jawed stupor, and yanked her viciously towards him. Lin, oblivious to what was going around him, frowned at this sudden change in behavior.

"Get Takebayashi and Okuda ready. We're making our move. Now," he said firmly, anchoring her in the immediate urgency.

"Now?" She hissed; Lin was staring at the exchange with a dawning apprehension. Even in whimsy, he could see something had changed, that these kids weren't who they pretended they were. These weren't scared children at the whim of his word, they had confidence. Lin's back started to straighten.

"Now!" Karma near shouted. "Kayano's about to blow our cover!"

* * *

"Akari-chan?"

 _Akari Yanigasawa,_ Kaede Kayano crooned. But there was no vertigo now, just the overwhelming presence of blue in her eyes and the red ramming against her ribcage.

Kayano turned back to the old man, doubt growing in his old face among the scars and wrinkles and laugh lines. His musk suddenly smelled of Yanigasawa, a rotting perfume whose reek swamped the house and crawled into the very darkness in Kayano. How had she missed it before, she knew the old man was evil, but she didn't realize how the two were so alike.

Kayano smiled. Her mask was rigid and raw in its forced pleasantness, she wondered if it would fool even the most gullible. The smile stressed her entire body, her hands began to twitch and her heart raced.

"This is the boy that my husband sold back to you?" she asked the man in a light tone, who in turn nodded cautiously.

"Jun!" the twin still lingering around her friends called for his brother with a wavering seriousness, distracting everyone for a moment.

Kayano nodded in turn, the false sincerity growing sickeningly sweeter by the second, it was dripping off of her thick like molasses as she made her way towards the old man. Her walk had a new childish skip to it- innocently closing the distance.

"I hope you are happy with him."

"Of... course. He follows my son well," he said with a caution, looking past her to the commotion with the twins.

Kayano, like a child reaching to hug her grandfather, leaned closer, her arms around him but not quite touching, confusing him further. "Of course he would make him happy. Like you said, my husband-to-be has an instinct about these things." He frowned while talking a step back, and she took a step in. "You told me how vital instinct is here, it helps you protect your family. It's so important you know. Family." She rambled on, then looked up with naive amber eyes, not in any way like Akari Yukimara, or Kayano Kaede, or Akari Yanigasawa would.

"Tell me old man, what does your instinct say now?"

He hadn't noticed that her hand ghosted to his sidepiece, gently brushing her fingers around the handle of his gun.

"Kid-" he began to warn.

The barrel of his gun was under his chin before he could blink, and she pulled the trigger. Pieces of his head exploded on the wall behind them, and the sound was so deafening it almost felt like it was punching itself through her body.

"Baba!" his son screamed.

The chaos was instant, the confidence and leisure in which the group of men strolled in exploded in rage and violent reflex, but Kayano was already a step ahead. She quickly changed her aim to the son, the man that _owned_ Nagisa and with a snarl she pulled the trigger again.

Nagisa was faster, he launched at the son, tackling him to safety, before rolling to his feet towards her. He still moved fluidly, like raindrops on a pane of glass, and he was at her in a second, forcing Kayano to stop her attack and jump back to create distance.

Her friends were also in the midst of their own chaos.

"Manami!" Rio barked the order, yanked Lin forward and off balance. It wouldn't be enough to stop a counterattack but before he could retaliate, Okuda's arm snaked from underneath his own, pulling him away from Rio, and with her other hand she smothered his nose and mouth with a rag. He lurched forward with impressive strength, trying to grab hold of Rio with his eyes wide in madness and betrayal, but he soon seized up and collapsed.

His twin, who had already pulled his gun ready to engage Kayano, looked back, furious that someone had attacked his brother. He went to aim, but Maehara was already moving, from the ground he pivoted on his left foot, hands on the floor and arced a kick up, forcing the firearm out of Jun's hand.

Okano had moved in tandem, she had grabbed the back of Jun's shirt, and in a genuinely elegant display, seemed to cartwheel up his body until the shins and thighs of her legs were on either side of his head. She jerked her lower body along with his head, the cruel snap of his neck just as loud as any gunshot, and his body crashed down lifelessly.

Kayano's friends were just as vulnerable as she was now, but Takebayashi took that moment to roll a container down the room; it didn't look like it was something they just had on hand, perhaps they stole it from the twins. Which meant it was potentially dangerous, Kayano went for cover.

The canister sputtered smoke, quickly filling room with swelling grey that scorched her nose and stung her eyes. She hit the floor, trying to get a clean gasp of air.

It was impossible to see, and the sounds of automatic rifles ripped through the building, spraying indiscriminately in hopes of killing her or her friends. He must have shot his own partner in the chaos, because a second later a screech of an older woman rang out, and the shooting temporarily paused for more confused shouting.

The gunfire was dangerous as it was sporadic, but it did well to mask her own coughs while clearly revealing their position. She ignored how the smoke pained her body and her lungs, she'd been through worse. She knew men like the devil and monsters lived both with her and in her head; she's _not fucking scared of them_.

She took aim and fired, the old man's gun had a kick to it, and with each shot the recoil launched her entire arm but she never let go. Either by skill or by luck, she must have been on the mark them because the shooting stopped, and Kayano did her best to roll silently away before they figured out where the shot came from.

The door opened in response to the commotion and Kayano swallowed a curse. _There were more_. She didn't know how many, and by now anyone who was left in the house was scrambling for the exit. A shot rang out from in the smog towards their escape route, Project E managed to procure a gun.

Kayano watched as the silhouette of the man was gunned down, filled with so many holes that the smoke filter through his body. The door made an easy target, funneling all the men in one point where light could shine through, but one of the insurgents laid down covering fire for his friends and stopping the barrage.

Kayano heard a window open, and two bodies jumped out, from this angle it looked like they were trying to scale to the roof. It must have been Hayami and Chiba then, they were going to higher ground to pick off any survivors.

As the open doors and windows began to filter out the smoke, she could see two more shadows among the slithering gray, one was the son of the man that met her, and the other was slender, small, and too familiar.

 _No._ Hell no, never. She wouldn't let him get away with this, you couldn't just… _take_ people. You couldn't scavenge the bodies of blue eyed, blue haired boys and twist and shatter them to your whim, then escape unscathed. You couldn't take the last vestige of love and support from the suffering to make them kneel before you.

Here, in the birthplace of the man that had given her so much, she wouldn't allow him to steal away his prodigy. She'd burn down this entire godamn island first.

Kayano rushed to him like a storm, the gun aiming for point blank, right between the eyes. The stains on the wall would match his father's.

And then Nagisa blocked her, his face loomed, and it was like he hadn't changed a day. He was faster, more skilled, but his focus, his intensity, the grace in which he moved was still so similar it almost took her breath away. Nagisa wound his grip around her wrist- twisting it down, and then his other arm went around her elbow pushing it up, and he rotated it until the awkward angle forced her to drop the gun, the touch of his skin sent shivers down her body, and then he continued on the pressure.

 _He feels cold_ , she thought idly, and then, _He's going to break my arm._

A flare of instinct reawakened, and she stepped into the direction he was taking her and spun into his chest, the pressure lessened and with her free arm she grabbed the collar of his shirt and threw him over her shoulder to the floor. He went down hard, and Kayano jumped over him to reach the man he was protecting.

Nagisa pushed up with his hands, bounding forward and delivering a clean kick to her stomach, she didn't fall but she scuttled on her feet, the wind knocked out of her. He had never been physically strong but he knew exactly where to hit to cause the most damage. He was approaching her with something in his hand, the sun ray gleamed off its polished surface, steel so brutal that when it sliced an inch into her forearm, it went as smoothly as if it were slicing butter. Her flesh ripped and blood flooded warm down her hand, her fist was wet with crimson.

He wanted to kill her. And he was going to succeed unless she fought back with intention to kill.

That wasn't right.

Because Kayano knew better than anyone her own limits and Nagisa's talents. She might be more agile and mobile, but in pure ability to assassinate, nothing could match Nagisa. He was in a tier of his own, untouchable to even someone like her who lived, dreamed, and ate the desire to kill.

If he wanted to take her life, she couldn't stop him.

Nagisa lunged again, like a snake snapping its body forward, and some things never change. She tried to duck out of his way but he was too fast, the blade a sliver to her throat. A hand reached from the smoke, grabbed a fist full of his hair, and slammed his face back down to the floor.

"Karma," she choked, and she didn't know if she was trying to thank him or to tell him not to hurt Nagisa.

"We need to end this," Karma shouted through the smoke and residual gunfire, his eyes were as red as his hair and he pressed a cloth around his mouth that smelled of vinegar. "Now."

Nagisa bent his arm so that it gripped Karma's hand that was holding his hair, securing it to his head so that when he turned his body it didn't rip out. Karma's hold was unstable and Nagisa threw his weight so that Karma flipped on his back and Nagisa straddled his waist, lifting the dagger to plunge into his heart.

Kayano acted on instinct, kicking him on the right side of the face and knocking him against the wall with a dull thump. Kayano quickly lent a hand to Karma, dragging him up and they both faced their opponent.

With Karma, they just might have a chance.

Nagisa closed the distance with an aggressive speed that contradicted the stoicism of his face, he swung the knife with a bent arm but Kayano ducked under it. She tried to kick at his feet, but his footwork was better, and he maneuvered out of the way and then back close, even with the fog around them she could see the flecks of yellow in the blue of his eyes and the faint freckles on his nose.

Karma kicked a chair between the two, it was too far away from Nagisa to really be aimed at him, he wanted to create distance between them

 _Ah_ , Karma must have figured it out. Nagisa was at an advantage when fighting close to himself, Karma had a wider reach and Kayano was just quick enough to take advantage of an outstretched arm.

Nagisa shifted left of Karma's next swing, dancing expertly out of the way and to his side, he struck his ribs with his elbow, causing Karma to bend at the sudden pain, but Kayano grabbed the back of Nagisa's jacket and threw him off balance. She reached in for another grab but everytime she looked at his face in all its detail, she would hesitate, Kayano Kaede in her head whispering about love. It was like dancing with ghosts.

He took that chance, grabbing her arm and throwing her at the window. _He wants to separate us_ _,_ she realized, they would go down easy if he could deal with them one at a time.

There was enough momentum that she crashed through the glass, it splintered against her and shards, pointed to slice, shredded at her dress as she was thrown out. She landed outside on sparse debris and scattered glass with a heavy thud.

 _I need to stop getting thrown out of windows_. She groaned, struggling to get up and avoiding the shards that pricked at her skin. _Fighting Nagisa is making me stupid._

She hadn't been ready. An hour ago, she refused to even say his name and now she was in a fight to the death with him. It was too much, too soon. Her voices chorused in dissent.

She was at the side of the house, hidden from view, she could hear sounds of firearms ricocheted through the air from the front. She took a moment to calm herself down.

A second later, Karma came jumping out of the window after her, grim faced and panting heavily. He spotted Kayano and nodded, more to himself than her; it wasn't because he wanted to see she was safe, from the absolute exertion radiating off his body it was clear that Nagisa was too much for him alone as well.

They both backed away from the house, smoke still pouring out like waves crashing on the shore; this is where Nagisa was most dangerous. When they lost sight of him, where he could take the advantage to disappear and reappear at the worst of times.

"Jiang!" Nagisa's master had screamed, calling for protection.

Heat spiked through Kayano's body, pure bred disgust was overwhelming her. _That's not his name!_ She wanted to scream, but an idea struck her.

"Keep an eye out," she shouted to Karma as she rushed the man that bought Nagisa, a shard of glass in her hand.

It worked, the threat to his life drew Nagisa out and he had come like whispers of a legend, awe inspiring but silent, it was as if he materialized from nothing. It had been a thing of beauty, watching Nagisa work, blooming out of the smoke and darkness, ready to strike.

Karma tackled him before he could stab her, his hands wrapped around his small waist and he threw him to the gravel and the impact was so sound that she feared he broke his back. He began to stir and the concern evaporated.

Kayano dropped a kick to Nagisa's head but he rolled out of the way, brandishing his knife once again. Kayano dodged a swipe and Karma reached for the wrist holding the weapon, but Nagisa dislodged his grip, Nagisa dropped the dagger but he then put his entire weight on Karma's arm, forcing it down at an unnatural angle and this time she knew she heard a crack, Karma's forearm broke and though he wore a thick black sweater, she could swear that she almost saw bone sticking out.

Karma didn't scream, he barely blinked before head butting Nagisa away. He staggered away, and got into another fighting position. Karma was glaring in concentration and silent fury at the pain, breathing heavily and blinking rapidly, but he did his best to hide it.

 _This is getting nowhere._ Ahead she saw Nagisa's "owner" running away from the fight towards the few comrades he had left.

"Karma!" she shouted and he understood immediately, kicking the knife that Nagisa dropped to her. It spun to her feet, she swept it up blade first, readied it behind her back, and threw it to the running man. It planted solidly on his back at his spine, he jerked at the intrusion, with a high pitched screech before he fell unceremoniously.

Nagisa stopped, he slackened with disbelief at the sight of the dead man, and all will to fight dissipated. His mouth opened wordlessly, and he looked as if he was staring at the impossible, like the truth presented was so irreconcilable with reality that it took the resolve from him.

Karma took no chances, he reached from behind him and placed his arm against Nagisa's neck, choking him. Nagisa's fingers grasped at the offending arm and clawed, but the furiousness was gone and after a disheartened struggle, his head lolled and his knees buckled. Karma let him fall on the floor in a heap.

They won. Nagisa looked like a corpse.

Karma ran towards Kayano, shoving her forward with a harsh push on her back. "Come on, it's clean up time." His eyes were forward and steeled with determination towards the ongoing sounds of war.

He meant to kill every single one of those bastards.

"Good."

This would be easier. Everything was easier than trying to hurt Nagisa.

They snuck from the side of the house, sliding from cover to cover almost effortlessly, crouching low and with light footsteps.

The survivors had been preoccupied with their shootout with the rest of Project E, they hid behind the van they had arrived in, pinned down but not giving in.

They hadn't noticed either Karma or Kayano as they slithered their way behind them, at the thick overgrown bushes of an abandoned house on the other side of the road. They had a clear view of the few left, three men making their last stand with assault rifles, against two hidden assailants from the top floors. One of the men was attempting to get into the driver's seat so they could drive to safety.

A glance at Karma's face told her that anyone escaping was unacceptable. He lifted a hand as a silent command to stop; he motioned two fingers to his eyes, he wanted to observe first. The three men were in close enough proximity to each other that it was impossible to stealthily take one out without alerting the others, if they wanted any chance they would have to move together, take out two simultaneously and be smart about the third. She took a deep breath and readied herself for a sprint.

He dropped his hand as the signal, and they both dashed towards them, letting the gunfire drown out the sounds of their rapid footsteps. Kayano reached for the portly man, edging his way towards the steering wheel and their freedom. He was the most dangerous, concentrating less on the enemies in front of him and most aware of his surroundings, he was the key to their escape.

She crouched low and rebounded off the ground into a leap on his wide back, she threw herself to his shoulders and he slammed down, his head smashing on the door in a nasty crunch. He reared back with a wail, dropping his gun and reaching for his face, his nose broken, streaming blood, and his teeth indented on the metal.

The third man at the doors of the van turned to the bloody scene, and lifted his gun towards her in response. Kayano planted her foot on the solid of the van and with all her strength, yanked the heavy body around so that he was between her and the shooter. The man was already firing at his friend before realizing what she had done, the meat of the portly man provided a shield before he collapsed, dead.

Further away, Karma was with the man he targeted, even with one broken arm swinging uselessly at his side, he had somehow overpowered him. He kicked at the gangly man's knees from behind, forcing him to kneel, and then shot him in the head, execution style.

"Rìběn gǒu," the last spat in a rage, and he ran, shooting his gun sporadically in the air as tears of wrath streamed down his face. The bullets landed dangerous close to Karma and he was forced to roll away, leaving the weapons behind. As the last man left his cover, Chiba, still near the roofs began to lay fire as well.

Chiba's shot grazed the man's cheek but didn't stop him, and the man dove out of their line of sight. Hayami quickly swung her legs out the window and hopped out, landing like a cat to the ground below, giving chase. Kayano watched as the man blindly pointed his gun behind him where Hayami landed by pure chance.

"Hayami!" Kayano cried in warning, but it was too late, a bullet tore through her and she recoiled like an invisible force shoved her violently, her blood flowered her chest and she fell in mute bewilderment.

Chiba screamed.

Kayano couldn't recall ever hearing Chiba raise his voice, but now his screams pounded in her ears, louder than the gunfire, louder than the cracks of bones, louder than her heartbeat thumping erratically in her ears.

Chiba was in absolute hysterics, he scaled down the walls of the house, his screams bloodcurling and half mad.

"Get out of there!" Karma shouted after him, because Chiba was now in the open, but he ignored the order. He fell to Hayami's side and cradled her against himself, and now his screams were intermingling with hoarse sobbing. Rio and Takebayashi rushed out to drag them into cover, but Chiba couldn't process that they were there. He lost his mind, holding her in his arms and rocking back and forth, rooted to the spot.

Kayano ran out of cover, she needed to end this situation before someone took advantage of it. The gunman began to understand what was going on, that he shot one and left more vulnerable, and that they wouldn't let him escape. He was ready to take out as many as he could when he spotted Kayano barreling toward him. He swung his gun to her and there was no time to dodge, but Karma shot, having retaken the weapons he lost.

He wasn't as skilled as either Hayami or Chiba, but he still managed to nick his arm. It was enough to throw off the last man's aim, and Kayano dropped to the ground, sweeping him off his feet. She crashed a knee to his throat and he wheezed in agony before pushing her off like a ragdoll. They both reached for his fallen gun, his arm was longer and he grabbed a hold before she could, he smiled wide and insane like he already won.

In a fit of desperation, Kayano bit down on his arm so hard she could taste his blood and ripped out a chunk of his skin before going down to bite again. It was childish tactic, something that she would be ashamed as a trained assassin, but now the adrenaline was driving into her body like a river and she was just brutal and raw and didn't care how crude her fighting was.

He yelped and then with the other hand punched her hard in the face, bruising her under the eye and knuckles dragging enough friction on her skin to cut. Her eyes flickered up, his fingers loosened from the gun in pain. She stretched out her arm and grabbed his ring finger and rammed it back until it broke so badly it hung limply from the knuckle.

He squealed like a pig, he let go of the trigger completely without realizing it. She pushed with her knees and snatched the gun from his hand, she crawled on her hands and knees in a frenzied, erratic pace to get a safe distance away before lying on her back and pointing to him.

The look on his face was a moment of enlightenment, the dawning of fear in the wake of a terrible fate, it was such a heart wrenching look that Kayno was sure if he was able to walk away just then, his life would never be the same. He would not walk away.

She fired and his body jerked to the beat of the bullet sounds. She'd never used an assault rifle before, and the recoil rammed back on her shoulder with such a force she thought she might have dislocated it.

They won. Killed every last sunuvabitch.

She lowered her weapon, she exhaled so resoundly that her entire body shook with released tension. The world sounded eerily dead without the sounds of struggle; gone were the cries of men, the pounding of her heart, and the bulletstorms reigning in the evening sky, and the only thing left in the emptiness was Chiba's scream, echoing on red streets.

* * *

 **AN:** This was the chapter I wrote then realized I might need to up my rating, just in case. I was originally worried that the fight scene would be short, and I ended up dragging it out to a pretty respectable length. It's kind of a relief to write fight scenes because there's just so much talking in this fic that a fight is just what I needed to break up my frustration with it. Also they are fun to write.

Not much to say other than I wish I could include more of the characters in fights, it's just fun. And Kayano continuing to get distracted midfight made for fun mood shifts, where it went from really nostalgic and wistful, back to brutal survival.

 **sachiiimaii:** Thank you for the review! I love Nagisa, I don't think I would have it in me to never write him. And Nagisa is so closely tied all of their issues and PTSD that it's pretty fun to write their reactions, between Kayano being mesmerized and Karma's shock not only at him being alive but his own reaction.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you liked this twist, I hope this chapter lived up to the expectation.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Well now it's obvious the reason I had to write the Chiba/Hayami POV : It won't come next chapter but it will be soon. Hayami's life is up in the air this chapter, and Chiba just can't handle bad things happening to Hayami, it's the weakness of codependency.

Yeah, I had to write Karasuma is a way that he couldn't help out Project E because he is too attached to let them fall into hands that would use them. So Karasuma ended up as the scapegoat and is either completely fired or demoted to something humiliating, so to rob him of that chance. It's really a bitter end to his whole career.

 **Anon:** Thank you! I hope you liked it so far, and in the future.

Thank you to any that favorited and followed!


	9. Chapter 8: A Time to Tie Loose Ends

**Project End**

Chapter 8: A Time to Tie Loose Ends

* * *

And just like that, it was over. The world reoriented itself in its loss of violence, and Karma sat rooted to the ground, trying to comprehend the lack of gunshots blaring in the sky. He focused on the incessant ringing in his ears first, it shrilled and muffled everything around him, and the only thing that punctured the fog of sound was Chiba's screaming, unrelenting in its anguish.

It was stupid to dwell on his ears, Karma thought, because a second later the fury of his broken forearm came in full force. It was almost crippling, dominating his senses so thoroughly that when he tried to stand, he was brought back down with a vengeance. He repressed a gasp as it radiated pain, he couldn't even rotate his arm to examine it without jolts shocking down his whole body.

He wanted to sit there and cradle it until the pain magically went away, but Karma had a mission, so he grit his teeth and once again tried getting on his feet. _Just got to see it through._ He walked, followed Chiba's continued wailing, and _fuck_ he went at it like the world was ending.

Chiba hadn't let go of Hayami, he was still holding her to his chest, rocking her with his mind gone, her blood soaking him down to his skin. Takebayashi was with Okano, trying to gently pry Chiba away from her without jostling her body.

"Chiba-kun, you need to move, I need to see her wounds," Takebayashi ground out as he tried to separate the two by their shoulders. Even with Chiba completely mad and unaware of everything around him, he understood on some primal level that someone was trying to take Hayami away, and he squeezed her closer like he was hanging on for dear life, his screaming came louder and it was a wonder he didn't completely destroy his voice.

"Chiba!" Takebayashi shouted desperately and it was Sugino of all people, still looking as distraught as ever, that came up behind Chiba and delivered a solid blow to the back of his head. He slumped away completely unconscious, and Karma felt himself finally unwind now that the screaming had stopped. Sugino dragged Chiba away as Takebayashi and Okano slowly lowered Hayami to the ground.

Her eyelids fluttered open, her eyes were glazed and it hauntingly matched her distant whisper of, "Chiba."

"He's right next to you," Okano soothed as Takebayashi quickly ripped her shirt away from her gunshot wound, her ribcage was weeping red and her breath seemed to stutter with every inhale.

Takebayashi lifted Hayami up so that Okano could inspect her back. "Do you see an exit wound?"

"Yeah."

"At least I don't have to pull the bullet out," he muttered as he gently lay her down again. He put his head near her chest, and listened. "Shit, shit." He placed his hands over wound, and the blood smeared his palms and his fingertips. "Okano, remember the pills? I need you to find the bags and bring them to me. And bandages, if you can't find any make them from clothes. And I need tape."

"Tape. Clothes. Pills," Okano repeated, her face pressed in concentration as if she was trying to comprehend a particularly difficult test question.

"No, not the pills, godamnit, the bags," he snarled as he applied pressure. "Give me the damn plastic bags."

"R-right."

Karma sank down next to him, it was surreal to see Takebayashi take command over a bleeding classmate, it almost reminded him of Nagisa. In all its blood and gore, those moments almost looked like they should be in the movies, behind screens with special effects, and not here, by his feet. _Like the movies, that's right. Think of it like that._ Karma pushed the personalness away again, like he did a million times before, and let the distance calm him. He could see better when it wasn't so near, but for some reason it was difficult to do when Hayami's blood was pooling from below her back and stretching out like a rainstorm's puddle.

It was the same shade as Nagisa's blood that day. _Nagisa didn't die._

"The mission," Karma said and Takebayashi ignored him. He tried again. "Is Hayami going to be okay?"

"She will as long as dumbasses don't screw things up for us," Takebayashi replied, but with no real malice. He wasn't interested in assigning blame, just pissed off at the situation in front of him. "She has a sucking chest wound, air is entering her chest cavity in ways that it shouldn't. If I can tape three sides of the plastic bag I can seal up the puncture sites without completely closing it off to release the air. Then compress it to stop the bleeding. She was hit in a dangerous area, but I don't think the bullet hit anything vital, so we might be able to keep her going until I can get my hands on something really helpful."

"How long can you stall that?" Karma asked and Takebayashi gave him a hard look.

"You need time?"

"We need to finish things here."

Takebayashi looked like he swallowed something foul, but in the end he understood. It was a nasty sort of compliance, like saying yes with a knife to the throat, but they all knew that leaving a mission in this state was nothing short of a disaster. And disaster on their terms had consequences.

Takebayashi pressed on the wound harder. "Fucking hell. Then do what you need to do, Okano and the others are securing Jin in the house."

"Right."

Karma got up, favoring his right arm with a grimace.

"I'll take care of your arm later," Takebayashi said without looking up.

"This? This barely stings, just focus on keeping the girl from dying."

Takebayashi snorted. "Moron. If you pass out from pain I'm leaving your ass to die."

Karma wasn't a person to let insults slide with any sort of charity, but there was not enough time or energy to retaliate with his standard sarcasm, so he simply went to search for the others. He stepped over the dead bodies, all various ages, full of holes and looks of shock and anger plastered permanently on their faces. Some of the worst ones were so full of gunshots that their insides spilled out. It reminded him again of bad movies.

 _It's weird._ It hadn't struck Karma until now, when he had to hop around a particularly large woman, that this was the first time he killed someone. It was a dull sort of revelation, lost in adrenaline of the moment, and the radiating pain in the aftermath. He killed people.

He had certainly trained to kill them for a long time, but there was nothing like seeing the corpses of the unlucky bastards decorating the floor to really drive it home. He didn't feel pity or guilt, and he always knew he wouldn't because he was Karma of course. But if he was stuck here, philosophizing like some worthless poet, well, he wasn't as unaffected as he always believed he would be. That wasn't particularly comforting.

He glanced around, it should be everyone's first kill too. Except for Hayami and Chiba, they been rumored for months to have already been sent on sniping missions. Karma blinked at Okuda, she was skiddish, but she was always skiddish, all things considered she was acting as she normally did.

 _Okuda's killed people before I did,_ he thought as she glanced at him, waiting patiently for orders. Karma felt the itch, deep inside his broken bones. He knelt down next to her carefully, holding his arm so that the pain didn't explode; they were in front of a still catatonic Lin, his dark hair tumbled over his face and his brother, lying dead with the broken neck and the same face, just a few feet away from him.

 _Maybe I should turn his face so it's the first thing Lin sees._ He didn't need to say anything, Rio was already on it. Birds of a feather.

"How did you knock him out?" he asked, rechecking the bindings around Lin's feet and arms.

"Bleach and rubbing alcohol," Okuda replied. And with an almost apologetic smile added, "In the right amounts it makes chloroform. Those were the supplies I was asking for that night."

Karma nodded his head, as he began to hit Lin's cheeks, his expression tightened at the slaps. "Good work Okuda. Now go and help Takebayashi."

Okuda looked like he had struck her, she turned pink and she backed away. "B-but I'm on interrogation duty. I can-"

"Help Hayami," Karma said, allowing annoyance creep into his voice. He tilted his head towards her. "You're more useful there."

Okuda bowed her head and if the world listened to their wishes, the earth would split in two to drive them further apart. "Okay," the braided hair girl murmured, before stumbling away.

Karma went back to his goal of prodding the young man awake. The redhead very specifically didn't watch Okuda go, but Rio crossed her arms and watched the whole thing.

"You're so full of shit." Rio shook her her head.

"Okuda's people skills aren't good enough to handle a quick interrogation. She's better suited for medical purposes," Karma said lightly. "We're on a time crunch."

"Do you ever get tired of the crap that comes from your mouth? Because I do," Rio said dully. She tightened the rope on Lin's arms.

Karma got a little more dangerous, the mood shifted and the temperature dropped. "Come again?"

"This imaginary wall," Rio started, waving an invisible barrier with her hands, "If you want to pretend it's there to make you feel better about what happened, that's fine. But when it starts to interfere with the team, then we've got a problem. You know Okuda knows more about weaponizing basic household chemicals than anyone else here, and you know she could easily handle the more dangerous parts of interrogation."

"I also know she has problems when gathering humint as much I know you've been wanting to start problems with me."

"Please. This tsundere act where you keep her away but circle her to make sure she's okay, like some fucked up interpretative dance, hasn't fooled anyone but you."

His eyes narrowed and tension rippled under his skin like waves in the ocean. "You're playing a dangerous game, Nakamura."

"Bring it on. You're not the only mildly disturbed child genius in this pony show, Karma."

Fuwa stomped to them. "Stop it you two," she said with a tired tone. "You're not going to fight in front of our guest."

Lin had woken up, his eyes were dazed and he squeezed them shut at the light, he took a second to get his wits about him, before jolting completely awake with a forward burst. His eyes were wide, and when he saw his brother's dead face staring right back at him with bottomless black eyes, panic gripped him and he struggled to get up, not having realized he was bound. He managed to get on his knees and attempted to free himself with desperate jerks, hysteria mounting before Rio put her foot on his shoulder and kicked him down. He looked back up to her.

Rio began to ask him questions in broken Cantonese, it was a painfully confused process but she was the only one here that had anything near the mastery of the language that allowed a back and forth. He caught a few of the words like "A man named Bu," and "Tell me when" but he had been mostly focused on reading Lin's face. He was closed, answering the question with as little as possible, his entire body was tense and he was blinking a lot.

"I don't know what he's saying, but he's lying to you," he informed Rio.

"Yeah, I don't think he's quite motivated enough," she said before grabbing his nose and forcing his mouth open. He struggled under her hand until she forced him to drink something. He thrashed suddenly and violently from it, before rolling on his stomach and coughing it out.

"What the hell was that?" Karma asked.

"I dunno. Something Okuda cooked up so that we don't leave any marks on the body." Rio patted his back in false sympathy as he dry heaved, eyes watering as he struggled for breath, he let out one last cough and spit up blood. He looked horrified.

Torture wasn't something that Karma enjoyed, it was such a backward tradecraft that more often yielded bad intelligence than good, there was a dozen better ways to get prisoners to sing. But not with the situation as volatile as this was, they needed to know as much as they could as fast as they could, even if they had to use the crudest tool in their bag.

"Bu," she said again, and spoke to him as his limbs shook in fear and exertion. He began to babble in his home language and she sighed, grabbed the back of his head and pulled it up, readying the concoction again.

"Tìhng dài!" he croaked as he tried to shake her grasp, and began to rabble on again. Whatever he said, he was looking directly at her and wasn't blinking anymore. He was really talking now.

Rio set down the bottle. "He said Bu is dead. They dumped his body in the bay not too far from here."

Fuwa looked disappointed, but not surprised.

"Did he say how they found out?"

"No, he said Jun took care of things like that. You believe him?" Rio's face twisted in annoyance.

"It didn't look like he was lying. I guess we took the wrong twin." Karma suppressed a grunt of pain as he got up, taking Nagisa's knife out of his pocket. He had taken it in the struggle, and up close he could see it was wellmade, probably custom created. Besides a fresh dripping of red, it was polished to a mirror. Nagisa took good care of it.

"Saving Jun would have made no difference," Fuwa replied. "Jun was a believer, he wouldn't break like Lin." She tapped her chin, deep in thought. Fuwa had a gift for taking loose strands of information and weaving it together to make a coherent picture, but she was always obvious with her cues when she was thinking. "Maehara is taking a last look around for clues but I don't think we'll find much else."

"Then we're done here." Karma tossed the knife to Rio. "Make it quick. This way it looks like Nagisa did it."

For the childish goofiness Lin possessed, he still understood what was going to happen next. Murder was part of his life after all. He began to inch away backwards, shaking his head and the tears began to fall down his face. Rio followed.

"Mhgò," he said, weeping and begging. Then in Japanese said, "Please, please."

He pled until Rio bent down and slid Nagisa's knife cleanly against his throat. She watched as he fell to her feet, and after staring a long second she walked to where the brothers kept their booze, and took a swig of a mostly empty bottle. "Well, let's go clean up," she said taking a deep drink.

She let the now empty bottle hit the floor. "Twins," she sighed.

-x-

Sometimes Irina Jelavić wondered if she was born for this. And if that was true, if that was a damning statement of her or the world.

But there was a time not too long ago, that she fooled herself into thinking she might have had a chance for something else.

Maybe that's why she spent the better part of the day doing her best to delay sale of her former students. She had convinced her students, and a little part of herself really, that it was to give them more time to search around for their target, but one could only deceive themselves for so long before you were just a plain fool, and fools don't survive in this industry.

She didn't want them to go down this path. It was too late for her, and when she looked back on what she had to do to get here, she thought about how she wanted more for them. It was probably too late, she told herself to come to terms with what had happened to them when she got the assignment. She expected them to be more jaded, more willing to get her hands dirty, and she thought _, well, this was just the way it was_. But seeing them was like getting sucker punched, it knocked the wind out of her.

It would have been easier if they still didn't look so young. They had grown a some, if she was being fair, and two years is a lot for brats, they were taller, their bodies filled out more, the last of the baby fat slowly fading away, but they will still brats. And the worst part of working with kids is that they never view themselves as kids, they always thought they were more mature than they were. And because of that could never admit when things were going bad.

Her phone rang mid conversation with another member of the PDM, a madam who was higher on the totem poll than the twins, but not high enough to attract attention.

She looked at the caller ID. Lin. "Speak of the devil," she said to the other woman. "Complains all day about the price, yet always come crawling back." The lady laughed, it seemed the twins were not very popular. "Speak."

"It's us," Rio's voice came through, and the hairs on the back of Irina's neck rose. There were dozens of reasons why Rio would take one of their phones, none of them good. Irina continued to speak in Cantonese, she had an audience.

"There better be a good reason why you're bothering me."

"A group of unknowns arrived at our location. Our cover was compromised and things went fubar. We had to neutralize the situation."

Irina was very much a professional, and that was never so apparent as it was now. She crossed her legs as she studied her nails. Then she said, "My merchandise is still in top condition I hope." The woman next to her raised her brows and Irina rolled her eyes. The madam nodded. Irina's hands were tied talking here, but if she kept her message simple enough, she could communicate just as well.

"All hostiles are down... but Hayami was shot." Irina'a blood ran cold. "Takebayashi is on it. I think she'll make it."

"If you're calling me it better be worth my while."

"We're playing cleanup as we speak. Because of certain... complications we're going to make it seem like that there was a firefight with the other PDM members that showed up, and then making it look like they ran. There was no love lost there."

There was a sick pride that welled up in Irina's chest, she couldn't help but be a little impressed with these children who she once taught, and how they could understand and maneuver the hidden corners of assassination better than men twice her age. Most assassinations, as it turned out, was less about how to kill a man, and more about how to kill a man and make it look as if someone else did the deed. It was a guilt riddled pride, because once upon a time they could have used those skills for their dreams. They could have had a life if only...

 _If… The what if's_ were a quiet poison, they invaded your body and shut you down from the core. They break down conviction until it withered to dust, and turns men into suckers trapped in dreams.

"We're heading towards the rendezvous point now. When will you arrive?"

"I'm not doing anything until our deal is over."

There was a long second of silence and Irina was scared that perhaps Nakamura hadn't understood what she was saying.

"You're staying." It wasn't a question and sounded every bit the sixteen year old she really was.

Had this been any other operation, Irina would have left and still retained her reputation. She had, after all, done her due's diligence and it was Project E who jeopardized the mission. Lingering in this country, trying to control a house already on fire was a fool's errand. But this wasn't just any other operation, and it wasn't just any other coworker.

Irina was probably born for this, but in a momentary lapse of judgement, in a long abandoned string of time, Irina remembered wondering if she could have been a teacher. She remembered what it was like to cultivate rather than break; it sounded like chalk across the board, and the warmth of a blush across her face, she remembered sweaters and the taste of chestnut noodles with friends and the cheerful cries of "Mornin' Bitch-sensei." Irina remembered what it was like to be surrounded by people she cared for and who cared for her.

Irina was no teacher, but she could at least she could do this.

If this mess was traced back to them, the blow-back would have been large enough to have repercussions she didn't think they could handle. Not now, at least. So she stayed.

"Just sort this out and stop wasting my time." She hung up, not bothering to think of a good code for, "goodbye" or "I'll be okay" or "stay safe." She was already being too soft. Damn brats, she remembered them with knobby knees and snot nose faces, and maybe she was infantilizing them in nostalgia, but they were her damn brats anyway.

She turned to the woman. "Those twins are a piece of work. They said they were visited by another of their group and they were demanding we settle. Are they always so pushy?"

The lady laughed, "Ah, they were stuck there because no one could work with them." Good, that was good. An opening she could use.

Irina clasped her hands together and settled them on her knees. "So, where were we?"

This was dangerous, this was flirting with wolves inside their own den. Her opponents were volatile and she lacked the oversight of Project E's actions to know what their specific plans were.

But if she spent the rest of her life carrying that damn octopus's torch, well, there were worse ways to go. Maybe that was what she was born for, anyway.

-x-

Nagisa, his name was Nagisa, and it struck Kayano as utterly unfair that he his limp body was strewn carelessly, headfirst in the gravel and dirt. She stood there, still as the dead and staring, wide eyed and stupefied, she didn't know what to do with this moment.

The world was very, very far away, the sound stifled by layers of cotton in her ears and her eyes began to blur the colors.

Her gaze flickered around him, not taking anything in. He was alive, and that was so irreconcilable from the truth she built her life on, it could be that the very ground she walked on was paved from lies. She hadn't been this so adrift since the day he died.

She at least understood her goal then; at her lowest point it helped breathe life into her when everything else seemed lost. But that was when he was dead, and now she was confronted with him and the very idea of what he would say if he saw her now.

"Nagisa," she said, and it was so thick that she could choke on it. Saying it made it even more surreal, because it was as if all the names in her head where in harmony, murmuring _Nagisa_ like it was the one thing that unified their thoughts.

She was on her knees now, and her hands wrapped around his shoulders. She almost thought she would pass right through him, but he was real, and he was there. She forgot she had been cut, the blood made her grip wet, and when she saw the red spread on his shirt, her fingers shook and she almost lost her grip.

She pulled him to her back and lifted him, his weight pressed into her, his head rolled on her shoulders, his hair spilled over, and it was like she was feeling all of him. He wasn't heavy by normal standards, boys her age were supposed to get taller, broader, but here he was, almost as slender as her. She wondered if that was normal, he had always been small after all. Or maybe they didn't feed him, maybe they just locked him up until they used him.

She'd never been one for physical strength, so her knuckles knees slightly and her back bowed, but she managed to drag the two of them to the rest of her classmates. In her daze she hadn't realized Chiba stopped screaming until she saw him laying unconsciousness the ground.

Watching it all unfold brought reality rushing back, like a flood of cold water crashing on her, the sound returned, the time that slowed to a crawl began to flow naturally, and Kayano realized just how badly she fucked up.

 _Oh, oh. My fault._

Okano and Maehara were carrying Hayami to the slaughtered men's van, the sniper's skin was sickly and pale compared the vibrant red on her chest, and her eyelids fluttered open and closed. Rio was huddled in the corner, ending a phone call with a particularly grim face, and Takebayashi was forcing a very annoyed looking Karma to sit down. Okuda was on the other side of Takebayashi, a noticeable distance away from Karma while remaining close enough to help.

Takebayashi rolled up Karma's sleeve, his arm was disfigured, like train tracks that were unlinked, she could see where the break was and the bone threatened to poke out of his skin.

"I'm setting it," he said and Okuda offered Karma a rolled up magazine with trepidation.

"Put it between your teeth," she said, almost apologetically. "You're going to need it."

"No," Karma replied, "I won't." He gave her his shit eating grin and Takebayashi rolled his eyes.

At that moment Sugino wandered to Kayano, the first person to acknowledge her presence.

"That's… that's him," he breathed, and his voice was both nervous and tired.

"Y-yeah," Kayano said quietly. "He's alive," she said even quieter.

Sugino was the kind of guy who expressed emotion with his entire body, his head bowed, and his teeth clenched, his eyes watered, and his posture slouched forward while his body began to shake. His hands covered his eyes.

Kayano had forgotten to some extent just how much Naigsa meant to everyone, to Sugino especially. Sugino and Nagisa had been best friends once, with an ease that neither Karma and Kayano had. She could see it now in his display, Sugino was such an open book that it was both relieving and terrifying to watch him go through all the emotions she hadn't been able to express.

"I shouldn't be happy," he said through muted sobs, "With Hayami in danger but it's... Oh man, oh man."

"I'm- I'm so sorry," Kayano blurted out, and Naigsa felt even heavier at that moment. "I didn't mean to, I ruined everything, I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," he said lifting his head and there were red marks where his fingers squeezed into his skin. "No one blaming anyone. I mean, it was Nagisa. If it weren't you, it would have been one of us."

"But it was me," she said, and didn't finish because she didn't know how to go on.

The horrible sound of Karma's bone being reset drew their attentions. To his credit, Karma didn't scream like most would, but he was sweating and flushed, and he rolled into himself with a clenched groan of pain. Manami forgot her timidness and reached forward to Karma, leaning him back to make sure he didn't bite his tongue.

He just smiled through the obvious pain, panting heavily. "That all you got? I've had math tests that were harder."

Takebayashi looked unimpressed. "I'm glad we can have this moment of you re-establishing your testosterone infused reputation." He started to wipe at the excess blood that covered him head to toe. "Okano, dress his arm up with a splint and sling. I'm going to wake up Chiba and hopefully shoving Valium down his throat will get him to calm him down enough for the trip back."

Karma insisted in standing without help. "I don't need i-"

"Please stop talking. It's tiring to listen to," Takebayashi said as Okuda went into professional mode, touching Karma's arm gingerly with her lips pressed in a thin line. Karma went quieter under the gentle presses of her hands.

Takebayashi looked up to Kayano and Sugino. "Is he dead?" he asked without inflection, staring at Nagisa.

Kayano shook her head. "No, he's passed out."

"Right," he said, but his eyes lingered on Nagisa's face a little more. "And you?"

Kayano blinked. "I'm not dead either."

"Your arm." He reached up and grabbed her arm, forcing it down for inspection. She almost toppled over with Nagisa on her back. "You're lucky, he almost cut your ulnar artery. You'll survive, if you clean it out and dress i- Are you drinking again?!" his lecture was derailed when Rio came out, looking substantially more pleased with alcohol on hand.

"Not for me," she said innocently, "Some whiskey to sterilize her cut."

He shooed her away dismissively. "For a cut like this, alcohol will more likely just damage the nerves. She just needs some clean water and soap."

Rio responded by putting the bottle on her lips. It stalled there when she spied Nagisa, she gave him a hard look, then took a prolonged swig. "I can't believe this shit."

Kayano slowly started to lower Nagisa.

"What are you doing?" Karma's voice went dull in an audible frown, his eyes narrowing in distaste.

"I'm giving you guys Nagisa."

"No," he said decisively, his face hardened like stone. He was very pointedly not looking at Nagisa, unlike the rest of her friends. "He can't come with us."

Kayano was startled. "You guys have transport coming soon I thought," she said confused.

"Our transport is being run by Project End. If they see Nagisa, he's going to get roped in. Look at him, do you think he can handle that."

"I-" This was all wrong. "I can't take him with me." She was near pleading.

"You have to Kayano." Karma grabbed her wrist, his good hand crushing hers. "Take him far away, make sure nobody else finds him. Figure out what happened and then come find us again."

She shook her head, everything in her body mentally rejecting this order. She wasn't that girl two years ago, Kayano wasn't capable of taking care of someone else. Especially not Nagisa. For those long years, she never once wavered from her path. To take Nagisa was to lose her way. Nagisa made her stupid at the best of times, and struck her with a debilitating paralysis her worst.

But she didn't see any other choice.

She didn't want Nagisa at the mercy of Project End anymore than her friends were. If she wanted to save him, she would have to take him, and this wasn't something she could just shoulder half heartedly.

She had to do it. But if she was going to, she promised, to herself, to Kurosensei, she would see it through to the end.

"I got it." She was impressed that her voice didn't tremble.

Karma relaxed his grip, not looking the least surprised. "Of course you do. Now, get the hell out of here, before someone spots you."

"What about you guys?"

"We have a mission to finish," he said blandly. As if to illustrate the point, Fuwa kicked the twin with the broken neck over on his back so he was facing the ceiling, a look of anger still frozen in his face.

She took one of their guns and shot him in the chest, then glanced up, giving Kayano a half hearted smile. "Have to make it look they had a firefight among themselves. If everything goes as planned, it will look like they kidnapped us too."

Kayano looked to Karma. "Will it work?"

Minami spoke up. "It won't fool any forensic expert, but they probably don't have those. As long as it looks like it is plausible that we didn't do it, then it's good enough."

Kayano watched as her friends went to work. They all looked as exhausted as she was, but they sucked it up, working through the pain and the shaky breathing of Hayami, still on the van floor. Kayano looked behind her shoulder to Nagisa's, his hair fluttered in a piercing breeze. "I'm going to need rope," she said to herself. She caught Karma's attention, and then clarified, "For Nagisa when he wakes up."

Karma nodded and Rio unwound it from the dead twin's arms and legs. She looped it around her arms and shoulders.

"I'm sorry," Kayano repeated.

Manami's face softened, and Karma snorted. "Not interested."

She licked her lips, and readjusted her grip on Nagisa, and tried again. "Thanks for having my back. I'll watch over Nagisa." They nodded, going back to their labor of dragging corpses, and hiding their traces, and Kayano started her drooping walk down the road, slowed by the stagger in her steps.

"Keep him safe, Kayano!" Karma called out after her. She raised her fist in solidarity.

The road ahead was long and broken.

* * *

A/N: I'm sorry for the delay. It's just editing is soul crushing, especially inbetween chapters like these, which are more necessary because everyone has to deal with the immediate issues that arrived, physically and mentally. There isn't much to say here, other than, hey, Hayami is alive and this may or may not be because I really like Chiba and Hayami and while I normally have no issues killing off characters, it feels like I can't here. I dunno.

I actually don't know if anyone still here after the long delay. It's so sad because it feels like the fandom is slowly shutting down, a shame because it really is a great fandom.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Well, no one is dead, but you're right in the fact that there really is no winning here. It's more just surviving under bad circumstances. Thank you for the review.

 **The Last Deathly Guardian:** You know, the more I think about it, the more I battle if killing off Hayami was the right thing to do. I don't like being the person who fakes out people, but at the same time, taking away someone from AssClass seems like breaking their group too much. I wonder if killing someone outright in the story would add to the story, at least the idea that what they are doing does have stakes and consequences, and how it will affect the way people interact.

I've been having a lot of these debates in shounens especially, where the audience outright demands characters be killed off to up the stakes and give the story weight. At what point does it add, and at what point does it detract? Like Kayano, people loved the twist of her getting "killed" but at the same time, killing her would be simple shock value that added nothing and completely ruin the atmosphere of the end.

 **18Gs:** Yes, Nagisa will be a pretty decent size of the story, and very strongly part of Kayano's part, as it was hinted here, and how she deals with him along with her ambitions and her own personal damage. Also I like Nagikae. I like Nagisa, the story would be empty without him.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** I'm glad you liked the fight scene! Minus a continuity push with Nagisa's fight, it was definitely the most fun to write because having people do things on paper, and pushing characters to their physical limit is fun. Thank you so much for all your reviews.

Thanks to anyone who favorited and/or followed.


	10. Chapter 9: A Time to Return

_Project End_

Chapter 9: "A Time to Return"

-x-

Kayano walked.

She had ambled as far as she could with a boy on her back, half stumbling on uneven ground where one road turned to another, and potholes increased in frequency. She wanted to go further, it would be bad if she were to be caught up in a sweep by whoever found their dead compatriots.

But by then her muscles were aching and her feet were sore; she had worn heels to this country. _Heels_. Who had thought that was a good idea? And she was sure the soles were cracked. She was sure she would fall in her face soon and wake up Nagisa.

She stopped by an intersection in a dreary part of the town, the lonely buildings all abandoned with broken panes of glass glittering on the ground just as plentiful as the gravel. She chose what must have been an old store, climbing through a broken window, the shelves long empty and the dust was generous on the floor, there were no electricity and the natural grim light thinned the further she wandered in. It was ugly and cold, but it had to be good enough.

She dragged Nagisa to the back of the store, propping him in a corner, his head rolled lifelessly as tied his wrists together behind his back, it couldn't be comfortable digging into his skin with biting furiosity but anything loser and she wouldn't be safe. She stood back, fingering the cold of the old man's gun she had taken.

The way the shadows clung to him, it looked like he was dead, and it sent her into panic. Did something go wrong? She thought it was strange he didn't wake up at all throughout the trip. She dropped to her knees and put her head to his chest and listened to him breathe; she felt it rise and fall, slowly, almost mechanically, reassuring her enough for her to crawl back to the other wall.

 _Alive._

And waited.

He didn't stir until at least an hour, and his awakening wasn't to any fanfare, it wasn't met with sudden bursts of emotional reunion or celebratory choruses, blaring from the heavens.

It was quiet and subdued, his head slowly rose while the wind rustled the old boards and the house creaked and moaned in its age. And she saw the blue from Nagisa's eyes open, they looked blank and dead. He saw her, but neither said a word. Maybe he was waiting too.

Kayano was good at subduing people, knew how to tie someone down well, it had been training since middleschool. But even then he could probably get out of those ropes if he tried. He didn't.

Kayano lifted the gun anyway, because she couldn't let him get into her head; _he's dangerous. Don't let your guard down until you're sure._ He stared down the barrel in cold contemplation.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

He might as well have stepped on her throat. His voice awakened sensory memory of those days, vivid and fierce and happy. Kayano nearly gasped as the voices sang. She shook her head, he took it as a no but in truth she was just trying to clear her mind.

She could never act her best in front of Nagisa, it was blushing and sideway glances and dorky words, had he not been so dense she was sure he could have realized her feelings all those years ago. But it wasn't like that anymore, she needed to be better.

 _Haruna Mase_ , she thought like a prayer. The name she used when she had to perform.

"I won't, unless you give me reason to," she said surprisingly evenly. Then the guilt pushed on her again, because Nagisa was the victim here, and now she was pointing a gun at him when he couldn't even fight back.

"I won't," he said submissively, his eyes downcast. They were all older, she knew that, so it struck Kayano how absolutely young he acted. Like a child waiting to be punished. _Stop._ "I won't, I don't have any reason to fight you."

"You almost killed me and my friends," she said tiredly, she never liked using guns. They were always so heavy.

"I needed to protect my master." The word master felt like acid poured into her ears. "I have no one now. It doesn't matter what happens to me anymore."

He looked very empty, sitting there, without an inch of the fire that had made Kayano fall in love with him. She lowered her gun, she was exhausted too, and there was nothing left in him to retaliate, she could see that. She leaned back and let her head hit the wall. Nagisa continued to stare blankly.

"Do you want to come with me?" she asked finally.

A beat. "Are you going to be my new master?"

"No!" she spat, a little louder than she meant to. She watched Nagisa cower at her tone. "No, no masters. Just… I'm inviting you... normally."

He stared at her as if he couldn't understand what she was saying, like the thought of anything besides a master-servant relationship was too unfathomable to comprehend.

 _What the hell did they do to him?_ "What do you want to do?" she asked.

He recoiled at the question. "I want?" he asked like it was a trap. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I want."

"You should come with me then." The truth was, it was never really a decision he could make, she always planned on bringing him back. She just wanted to give him the grace of a choice, but Naigsa just couldn't even understand that anymore.

"If that's what you want, then I will follow," he said. Kayano sighed. That was good enough, for now.

"We'll rest a little first then." She pulled a knife as she moved closer to him. He stared at the blade with wide eyes, then at her expectantly. He was waiting for her to stab him. So passive- like he assumed he deserved it. _This too much_. She reached behind him, leaning him forward, they were close enough to hear each other hold their breath, and she cut the rope from his wrists, letting his arms swung down free.

She withdrew and began to pace around the room, unable to look in his direction without seeing the victim in him screaming at her. The floors creaked under her bare feet, this house was little more than a shack, made of damp wood and rotting around the corners.

It dawned on her that Nagisa had no idea who she was, she understood it in a shallow level, but to really reflect on that she was just a strange girl that appeared out of nowhere and almost killed him felt weird. Foreign.

It was a two way street, this Nagisa was a stranger to her as well. The notion that they had to reintroduce themselves was ludicrous to her on some level. Back in the days of Kurosensei, they synchronized their steps when they walked, they copied each others notes, they knew each other's secrets and saw each other's lowest points, and now they weren't even sure how far they could trust each other.

"What's your nam- what do they call you?"

"Jiang," he replied. Yeah, that was the name she remembered hearing. He not only forgot her, he forgot his own name, she wondered if there was anything left of the old Nagisa left to scavenge. Then he asked, "What's your name? Un-unless you don't want to tell… I'm sorry for asking." He looked horrified.

 _Haruna Mase_ , she almost said, because she was still acting. Then _Kayano Kaede_ because it was Nagisa. _Akari Yukimara_. They all wanted to be heard and her head was cluttered with names, the vertigo returned and she had to sit down, put her head between her knees, and remembered to _breath_.

She let herself take a moment to recollect herself. "Call me Kuroko." At least for now, she wouldn't use any name that could potentially trace back to her real life.

"Kuroko-sama," he repeated like it was the most natural thing in the world. There was something to steeped in wrongness about the way he used sama too. _Call me Kayano-chan. If you can remember Japanese, remember that much at least._

She let the seconds flow into minutes, and they settled into an awkward silence. She ripped off her blasted shoes, more deadly than the men who tried to kill her.

Bitch-sensei would be proud of her learning to fight in heels, she thought with a sense of nostalgia. She always thought style was half of what made a good fight.

Kayano made her way to the window and kneeled down, resting her chin on the sill, looking out into a stranger's expanse.

Land of Kurosensei, where she found Nagisa. It wasn't something you could quite call irony, but the sardonic sting of it all had the same edge.

"I need," she said, running her hand through her black hair, "To make a plan. Get things moving."

She pulled out her phone, and to her relief, it hadn't been damaged in the fight. Three unread text messages, all from Ritsu proclaiming her not dead status. She replied to one of them.

"Need to get off island earlier than expected, completely anonymously and without anything to Akari's name. Erase any and all electronic trails of my contact with the PDM."

Ritsu replied almost immediately, bless the quick functioning of an automated identity, she could hire a local smuggler with a good enough sense of business to not ask questions and play stupid if someone came knocking, even if he was significantly more expensive. But she would have to go in with his cargo and he wasn't leaving from fisherman's port for another day.

But even hiding for another twenty four hours would be a risk with everyone on high alert. A truck ran rolled past, too fast to see if they were potential enemies. Better safe and assume everyone was.

"Do you know where the fisherman's port is?" Kayano asked Nagisa, who had taken to curling himself into the smallest ball possible.

He sounded off mechanically, "Yes, Kuroko-sama."

Her eye twitched. _Use the –sama,_ let it be the degree of separation that lets her be Kuroko instead of Kayano until they get the hell off this island _._ "How safe is it to go in and out with detection?"

"It depends on whether or not my master's comrades are searching for us or not."

Kayano tapped her chin. "Karma and the others said they were planning to make it look like it was an internal fight. I don't know what that entails though." Shit, she was practically blind here.

Her stomach rumbled despite it all, it was embarrassing and stupid. She palmed her face. _Haven't eaten since yesterday_. And even then the meal was small. The body doesn't stop being inconvenient just because people were hunting her.

"Are you hungry, too?" Kayano asked.

Nagisa did not look to trust her with an honest answer so instead he said, "You are hungry, Kuroko-sama?"

"I'm a lot of things. I suppose there isn't any place around here for a fugitive to get food?"

Nagisa blinked owlishly at her, before struggling up. Kayano tensed, partly because proximity with Nagisa and partly because she had been on the receiving end of Nagisa's assassination talents, and they were a force of nature in of itself. Of course she would be cautious.

Nagisa was just as nervous going towards her, unlike before when she thought of him like a snake- it reminded her of a rabbit, shoulders taunt, muscles rigid, and his movements had a certain jerk to them. It was so damn uncomfortable, like walking on pins and needles.

Nagisa slowly made his way to the window next to her, looking out and getting his bearing.

 _Close_ , she thought. They had been closer but not for this long, this lingering was sad and longing, but terrifying, their shoulders brushed and staid close even though neither of them were at ease.

"If you want to buy food without being found, then here is not the place. This neighborhood is completely controlled by my master's people."

"Then staying here isn't safe." She really didn't want to search for a new place, she had blisters on her blisters, and she knew so little about the lay of the land. Relying on Nagisa was… tricky. She stared at Nagisa's face nervous and taunt, framed by his hair, it was still sky blue and effortlessly beautiful. And distinguishable. "Are you well known in the PDM?"

He understood what she was asking. "They would recognize me. I was one of their better soldiers."

"Right." She crossed her arms in consideration. That limited their movements by a lot, but Kurosensei once taught her that all weakness could be warped into a strength. She could work his notoriety for some good.

Maybe later.

"We won't be good to anyone half dead. We rest before we move again," she said a matter of factly, still staring out the window. She hoped he would move first, give them both some space.

"Why?" he blurted out, almost as if it was uncontrollable. Why could mean a lot of things. Why was she taking him? Why was she there in the first place?

He looked dismayed at his own question, the rabbit analogy came back, large eyed and trembling in shock. "No, I'm sor- I won't ask. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He mumbled with his head down. Over and over again, in fear of her and in absolute subservience. She looked out of the window again, her shoulders slumped and her eyes dull, she didn't even bother addressing his apologizes.

"Get some rest," she said tiredly. She closed her eyes to the sounds of bitter winds slapping across plaster and wood and the quiet repetition of Nagisa's mutterings.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

-x-

"Have you ever seen a show," Sugino finally spoke as the rest of Class E loaded on the boat, "Where the main character gets sucked into this weird, surreal world that makes no sense. And like, in that world, everyone else looks at the main character like _he's_ crazy?"

"You have just explained plots of half of the anime I've ever watched," Fuwa deadpanned as she watched Hayami getting carted into a separate room, Takebayashi rolled his sleeves up as he got on his hands on better medical supplies.

Sugino shook his head to Fuwa's comment. "I mean, that's what our lives are now, right? Don't you feel like there's something wrong what we do, but no one says anything about it, like it's just another Tuesday at the office. I'm the odd one out, it gets to me and no one else, and I'm starting to think I'm the crazy one."

Karma said nothing. He half expected Sugino to have a breakdown that gave Chiba run for his money. He had looked like he was on the verge this entire mission. But now there was just this weird clarity in Sugino's eyes, like he finally found an answer to a question that was eluding him.

It was probably Nagisa, now that he was alive something sparked in Sugino. Karma's never been comfortable with Sugino, he was always a bit more sensitive and a lot more open than the rest of the boys in their class. It made Sugino an easier target for pranks back in _those_ days, but nowadays it was just so much baggage.

Sugino was too easily swayed by events, he deteriorated without Kanzaki, but seemed to rise to the occasion now that Nagisa was "not dead." No emotional stability.

"So what, would you rather we spare their lives and save them?" It was rhetorical, but the message was clear, no room for idealism.

"No. I'm not trying to say we shouldn't have fought. I mean, I killed them too." Sugino's face was determined. "But it still doesn't make everything right."

"Life isn't always about being right, Sugino." Karma stretched his back and heard a loud satisfying crack.

"Maybe, but it isn't always just accepting the just doing our job line," he said. Then quieter, "he's alive, Karma. That means… something." Then a little firmer said, "It means something."

"That's great," Karma replied with distinct disinterest. "You tackle the great philosophic questions of our times, and the rest of us will try to figure out if we managed to cause an international incident or not."

When the rest of the kids settled in Karma considered the small of the ship room. "Bitch-sensei said that there were no bugs on this ship, a condition they agreed to when working with her. Which means this is our last chance to discuss anything without big brother watching."

Rio raised a brow. "What do you want to talk about? Our suddenly reanimated friend or our dying one."

"Me, I have nothing to say, but Fuwa's been about to explode for the past twenty minutes." He nodded to her. Fuwa's problems were that she had a number of physical tells, or rather, she adopted anime stances anytime she had come across something interesting.

This particular tell came straight from a detective manga, it was a dramatic stroking of her chin, staring straight at him with her legs crossed.

Fuwa smiled knowingly at him. "Impressive, young Karma. I do indeed have a hunch."

"So speak." Karma inclined on the wall, elbows on knees.

"They found the PSIA agent out. How?"

"There's always a risk of having your cover blown," Rio replied, scraping dirt from underneath her fingernail. "We were able to figure out he was in the building just by looking through his room and finding meds."

"Yes, but we're trained for investigation," Fuwa argued. "The twins could barely keep their own house in order, and Lin said he had no idea how they knew he was a spy."

"Lin didn't seem like the greatest thinkers of our time," Rio drawled.

"Right, but if his brother really was investigating or drawing doubts, it would have been a slow process. He should have had some idea."

"You think he was lying?" Karma asked.

"No," she said. "He really looked clueless the entire interrogation. And he's not a good enough actor to fool us." Fuwa started walking in circles. "Don't you think it was weird? That they knew they caught the Japanese government spying in their ranks and they didn't retaliate? I mean, they're a terrorist group, it would have been a perfect opportunity to send a message, either humiliate us or tell us to back off. Or hell, they didn't even bother ransoming, and ransom contributes a hefty supply of income for these types of groups. But nothing."

"What makes you think they knew he was Japanese?"

"Don't you remember? When Jun was suspicious of Kayano. He asked her if she was Japanese. Even with us being from Japan, that would not have been enough to cause suspicion when we are so geographically close. Not unless there us already a preexisting reason for them to be distrustful."

"So why," Karma said, concentrating on his hands in throught, "would they keep quiet?" Then he exhaled deeply, rubbing his eyes. "We all thought it was weird our caseworker for this mission was upper management, they probably didn't trust this information being spread… There's a spy."

"At the very least, that's what the nice suits think. The only reason someone that high up work directly on our case without delegating like all the rest is either because they are control freaks or they didn't trust anyone else with handling this mission." Fuwa pivoted on her feet, finger raised in a eureka moment.

"It makes sense," Karma said with a bitter curl of his lips. This whole mission was a fucking headache, and if he had a choice he would walk back to that slaughter than deal with this whole charade.

Maehara considered this quietly, looking disturbed. "So… we think there's a spy? So what do we do with this? Tell Bald-san and wait for them to iron it out?"

"Fuck that," Karma spat. _And_ _fuck them._ He stood up, and Karma felt something angry and ugly claw at his chest _._ If they wanted to play this game, send him and his classmates into hell because they couldn't even keep their own noses clean, fine. He was good at games. "This whole thing devolved because of their incompetence. They dragged Project End into this mess, so Project End is going to clean it up our way, whether they like it or not."

"What, you just want to take this case? How?" Rio said. "Because the caveat of this issue is that we're not just dealing with Project End, iAgent Bu was part of the PSIA, so anyone could be compromised. You're going to investigate the whole community without anyone noticing?"

"Yes," he said, full of cocky self-assurance. "We are going to do it, and do it well." He felt blood burning through his veins, lighting up his entire body. His hackles raised as the devil's grin grew. It felt good, he decided, to finally take matters in his own hands.

"You're fucking crazy," Rio rolled her eyes, then nodded, looking amused. "I'm in."

"I think we all are," Sugino said. "It's just a matter of how we get this done."

"I'll find a way," Karma said. "The most important thing is, if anyone runs into Kayano, you tell her to come to me."

His options would be severely limited as soon as they touched down on Japanese soil, but Kayano worked as a free agent and Ritsu was a valuable resource. From there, he would have to put tabs on Bald-san. This leak seemed to be a high priority to him, which meant that he had the most evidence to sort through. What was left was just trying to pick up clues that they missed, without alerting anyone they were spying on the spy network.

No big deal.

Sugino sat down next to him, kneeling on one leg. Karma spared him a glance.

They had never particularly been close friends, connected loosely by the fact that they were both close to Nagisa. Then Nagisa died.

 _And rose from the grave_.

"We're all following your lead," Sugino said, "But you're going to have to make us better."

"Sugino- shut up. I'm trying to thi-"

"I know I'm not that smart," he continued. "But even I can see we're all over the place, man. Kanzaki always said live together, die alone." Sugino's eyes went disgusting soft at her name, he was always like that, honesty radiated out of his body language. Made for a terrible spy. "She said we needed to get better. So I'm just thinking, if you really want to do this, you need to work with everyone."

Then very, very quietly, like he was in fear of reprisal said, "That means Okuda-san especially. I think she needs you."

Karma leaned towards him, glowering. All these _godamned_ lectures and friendship speeches when he's dealing with murderers and terrorist spies. "I'm not anyone's mother, look for someone else to hold your hand." Only an idiot would come to him with these expectations of him, when he wasn't even their leader, that was a role more suited for Megu and Isogai; he was simply going ahead with what needed to be done, and anyone who wanted to help could fall in line and everyone else get the hell out of the way.

"No but you like winning," Sugino pointed out. "And if you want to win, that's what's got to happen." Sugino glanced at Karma's expression and immediately averted his eyes, backing a safe distance away. "I mean, that's all I got to say. Think about it." He quickly shuffled away.

Karma laced his fingers together, letting them settle over his mouth. This was all just a distraction. Right now, he had a spy to catch.

In the corner of his eye, he watched Okuda watching him. She was filthy, covered in blood and dirt, her black pigtails were undone and they came in tangles over rips and cuts, her glasses mangled at the tip of her nose. She looked at him waiting until the ship began to move in the waters, jerking everyone out of their stupor.

It was time to go home.

* * *

A/N: If i had to give a vague outline on where this story is, this is largely where this arc ends and the next arc picks up. I always wanted to write Nagisa and Kayano interacting, it only took eight chapters and around 50,000 words. I'm also a little nervous, I've written to chapter 11, so that means I only have a two chapter head start now for a story that has not only this arc, but another one last one. Oh well.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Ah, the Irina thing was largely show that she really is loyal to Class E, and that despite all her bravado, there's a part of her nostalgic for what could have been as a teacher. She's putting herself at risk for them, so the real danger is what will happen to her once everyone leaves. But yeah, Nagisa isn't necessarily safe, Shiro's always at the center of the terrible things that happen in Assassination Classroom. It makes for an interesting villain. Thanks for the review!

 **TheRoseShadow21:** I know how it feels. I'm reluctant to let the Assclass fandom go, but I've also kind of moved on to Boku no Hero, and probably FFXV once that comes out, hoping it will be could but keeping my expectations down. Karma gets called out a lot here too as well, but the challenge is mostly because of how inflexible he is, which is odd coming from such a sharp character that adapts his strategies. A lot of Karma's coping mechanism is the fact that he presents himself to himself in a very logical, structured way and it's how he deals. It's a lot harder when it comes to Manami and even Nagisa later. I feel like Kayano gets called out a lot too, even though it's pretty much for the opposite problem. It just shows you that anything can be a problem. Thank you for your insights as always.

 **The Last Deathly Guardian:** I really enjoy reading other people's insights, even if I don't take them. If nothing else, it gets me to think, I love this kind of fandom talk. I think it's a hard balance to find, how much do you want loss to stick to keep stakes high and twists genuine, and how much would letting people die take away from the story by forcing tragedy and characters going down paths that just won't work in the plot.

I hadn't really thought of what would happen if Hayami were to die, because she wasn't suppose to. I entertained it a little, but now that you bring it up, the loss really would be overpowering, the characters would be reacting a lot differently. Especially with characters so dependent on each other.

Kayano is the opposite of Karma, who is completely tsun and bottles things up, Kayano pretty much runs on emotions, and perfectly understands when she is anger and when she is scared, but lets it control herself too much. It makes her a fun character to write. And yes, I'm a huge fan of Rio, she gets set aside for Karma so often, it's a nice reminder that she is just as capable and willing to be in the same realm as the other characters.

And **Guest:** I'm sorry you don't like it, I wish you explained it more. I can sort of see what you mean, the what if where Kurosensei dies and Nagisa is hurt is less important as a well planned detailed story, and more important as a concept. I wrote about it before, but the idea came from one of the characters saying that if Kurosensei was killed by someone other than the kids, it would affect them.

The important idea is that during Class E they were loved, nurtured, and ready to make a big symbolic step by killing him. By taking that away, it denied them a lot of made them stronger, their ability to make that big step, the positive environment, even their reliance on Kurosensei's teachings. Instead everything flipped, they are now being treated by teachers/handlers that don't have their best interest in mind, where Kurosensei said not to be involved anymore- they are now working with the government, and they've thrown away a lot of their hoeps and dreams. This story is meant to explore that and the darker sides they fell into after this trauma, the unhealthy dependency, the trust issues, the single minded focus at the expense of everything else, their nervous quirks and their psychological problems.

Although I do have to debate one point because I am a nerd: you said that they would have all died. I don't think they would have, not because they are stronger, but because they were never the targets. Kayano was hurt because she got in the way, but the rest of Class E were not important except as witnesses and as a contrast to Kurosensei to what he has done and how he has failed his first student. Otherwise, they were largely forgotten. Yanagisawa even mentions wanting to keep Kayano around longer so he had no plans to kill her, and we have no idea how much longer would Kurosensei's first student would have lived after his fight with him since he was going to die anyway, or hell, I made it vague so maybe they could have finished each other off at the same time. It would have made just as less sense if they were deliberately targeted after Kurosensei died.

Anyway, thanks to all who favorited and followed!


	11. Chapter 10: A Time for Home

_Project End_

Chapter 10: "A Time for Home"

Kayano secured her hair into a tight ponytail, cracked her knuckles, and readied her knife. "You know how many are in there?"

"Last time I visited, this house had three members. I'm not sure how many prostitutes," Nagisa replied.

She nodded. "And you said you're easily recognizable, right?"

"Are we going to… attack them?"

Kayano glanced at the time on her phone. They had three hours until their transport arrived, until then she should do her best to help alleviate the mess she made. Karma said they were framing the people that enslaved Nagisa, and Nagisa was well known enough that the two of them avoided public. An impromptu appearance by Nagisa may just be enough to convince their enemies that his master was alive and still giving orders.

"Three is easy enough to take down," she murmured. Then she steeled her voice. "I need you to go in there and announce your presence, tell them you were sent to take the girls. Look menacing but don't hurt anyone, let them run away. I'll take care of the actual threats."

"I'll come to help you after they escape," he affirmed mechanically, almost like it was expected of him, as she began to work a lock at the back door.

She snapped her head in his direction and barked out a steep, "No!"

He flinched. A cold second passed and when she spoke again, her voice was softer. "No, don't fight unless you have to. After they are gone, hide. I will find you when everything is all clear."

She wouldn't let Nagisa fight anymore, especially for someone like her, he'd been through enough. It was bad enough she was using him like this. She focused on the door again, she had to slip off her gloves for the delicate work and her fingers were numbing in the freezing weather.

"Go," she said. "And stay safe."

"Okay," he confirmed robotically, with the efficiency she expected from a well trained soldier. A part of her remembered a similar voice, that would add, "you too, Kayano-chan." But that boy wasn't really him right now.

The lock gave in.

Her shoes were not meant for stealth, so she kicked them by the door. The night was drawing late and the sky was almost pitch black, so her targets were likely sleeping, or if Nagisa's intel was to be believed, drinking themselves into a sleep. From what little light that poured in, the whore house was a sad state, but so was the rest of the town.

She would only have a short moment before Nagisa would cause a panic, so she hoped to find them fast. She heard murmurs stifled behind walls, then the clinks of glasses and pots. The kitchen then.

Her targets hadn't noticed her, she crept like shadows, hiding in between the chairs that smelled of sweat and the trashcans overflowing with rubbish.

She saw the silhouettes of men against the dim overhead light, the closest to her fleshy and balding, the back to her was large and hiding most of the view, but she could see his ears were pink from drink.

She would do this fast, before they could even think about reaching for their guns. She memorized their distance and position, imprinting the space between her and victims in her mind, then reached for a blade, this Nagisa preferred seemed to prefer killing at close distance.

She flickered out the lights, and everyone went blind. Curses immediately erupted, more confused and annoyed than alarmed, and they began to bicker over their drink. Kayano sprinted, her feet sliding on the floor, keeping mindful of their approximate distance. When she neared a half a second later, she could see one looming figure, blurred into the darkness. She jumped from the edge of the chair he was once sitting on and in one fluid motion grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down. He let out a grunt of surprise and turned to react, but she already had the knife in the side of his throat.

He gasped and gurgled when she pulled it out, using the forward momentum to roll onto the table to her next target.

Now there were alarmed cries from the next man, completely in the dark and knowing something was here, ready for him, like a monster just under the bed. He was no longer where she had seen him to be, but she could hear the stumbling of panicked feet as he tried to fumble his way to the light switch.

He had managed to flicker it on, but before he could turn she had sunk that knife deep into his back. He screamed and twitched under her hands before slumping down, whimpering half dead. She spotted his gun, lying casually on the counter. She took it and put him out of his misery.

By now there were screaming women in the other rooms, Nagisa had made his move. Their captors were dead, the women were free, and now they only had to escape and tell everyone that Nagisa and his master had defected.

 _Wait_ , something wasn't right. She stared at her knife in a stupor, it weighed heavier as she struggled to remember.

 _Nagisa said there were three_. Her eyes widened and her heart thundered in her chest. The third _wasn't_ here, but that didn't mean he wasn't in the house. And if he wasn't going towards the sound of Kayano shooting the last man, then he would go for where Nagisa was.

She leapt into a desperate sprint, her feet thudding on the floors. _Nagisa, Nagisa._

The front of the house was empty besides the young boy, staring at the open door, its hinges squeaking as the wind blew it further open. He looked almost thoughtful, staring at the gap.

A third woman ran into view, this one was no victim though, she wore thick clothing and carried her gun in her hands and anger in her eyes.

"Duck!" Kayano roared and Nagisa didn't miss a heartbeat, he fell to the floor as the woman raised her weapon and shot. Kayano sprayed bullets in her direction indiscriminately, the fear of losing Nagisa making her aim sloppy. It didn't matter, the impact of the shots punched through the woman's body and she fell sideways into the wall.

It was good that the woman was dead, because Kayano's hands were shaking so hard she probably couldn't aim again. She dropped the gun and stomped her way to Nagisa. He was taken aback at her appearance, her eyes were wide and her pupils were dilated, and she was panting heavily with a horrified look on her face.

"Are you hurt?" she asked hurriedly, her voice was quivering much to her horror. She inspected Nagisa quickly, her hands went to his face and turned it, then lowered to smooth out his loose clothes looking for any damage. "Did you get shot?" There was no blood, no scratches that weren't from the fight with Karma.

Nagisa was watching the display with caution and muted surprise. She palmed her eyes when she was satisfied he hadn't gotten hurt, letting the panic ebb away.

"Kuroko-sama," he said unsure. "They will be coming back."

"Right," she lifted her face from her hands and looked like the professional she was. "If we leave now, we'll make our ETA."

She gathered her shoes from the door, and ignored the smell of the dead men whose bowels were released upon their demise.

"Why did you let the women go?" Nagisa asked.

"We need them to be witnesses, so they think you and your… well you and your crew are still alive." She put on the heels and began to walk furiously through the alleyways, Nagisa kept pace a half step behind her. It was intentional, Kayano noted, far enough away for him to be out of reach if she decided to attack, but close enough to lunge in for a knife in the back. It was a smart distance.

She paused in thought, then added. "And they didn't deserve to be whored out. Now they're free."

Nagisa's steps hesitated, before returning to his pace. "They have nowhere to go," he said almost sagely.

"They can go wherever they want now. They're free."

"There's no freedom here," he said quietly. "They'll just be lost and hungry and in danger. They have nothing to live for."

 _He's talking about himself_. He was lost, his master was dead and he was drifting nowhere, clinging onto the only other thing that seemed to be floating, her.

He didn't think he was better off, even though he had been abused and enslaved. She was no savior to him, she could see the way he was always _scared_ of her, waiting for retribution, that there were no good memories of people left for him to have hope.

She turned to him and opened her mouth to scold him, to preach to him, that he was free, and that he would be happy, and that he didn't need anything like masters or orders. But he just looked at her with baby blue and a withdrawn face that silently echoed his sentiments, and the words fled her. He looked very small. And very cold.

So instead she slid her jacket off her bony shoulders, the coat was thick and opulent, and now stained with blood, but it was at least warm.

"Wear it," she said shortly.

He stared at it. "I can't, Kuroko-sama, you will be cold."

"Your hair," she lied, pointing at his head. "It stands out too much. My coat has a hood."

He let the seconds drag before he took it gingerly in his hands, the jacket was overtly feminine, but Nagisa had always been lovely in ways that girls often envied, so it fit him. Kayano reached the fringes and slowly zipped it up to his neck, her eyes following her hands until her face reached his. She flickered her gaze away from his eyes as she carefully pulled the hood over his head, securing over his frost bitten cheeks.

Better. He was warm now so it was better, even if he didn't know it. He said nothing the entire time, she dropped her hands.

She pivoted on her heel, continuing on pace and not letting the chill slow her down.

"Kuroko-sama," Nagisa said, and when she looked back he was offering his own coat. It was thin and ragged, worn in the elbows and the color faded unattractively. "For you." It probably didn't do much to warm anyone up, but any piece of clothing would be better than nothing.

"It's fine, you wear it," she dismissed.

"To hide your clothes," he replied. "It looks too rich for this part of town."

She eyed him warily before receiving it, she clutched it to her chest and felt the scratchy cloth in her hands. "Thank you," she said and he blinked at the sincerity. She pushed her arms around through his sleeves, he was just as small as he ever was. Really though, would they ever grow up?

When they returned to their quiet walk she looked up and watched the thin, dark clouds roll over the ruined moon. The fragment pieces of the moon hoovering in each others orbit, each fragment shone separately like its own star cradling the broken whole.

Even in a place like this, the moon was beautiful.

She was taking Nagisa home.

* * *

Hospitals were shit.

That's what Terasaka always told Hayami anyways. Hayami had to agree, blinking out of her stupor. Waking was a slow burn, her head was groggy and her limbs felt like lead. Her senses came alive even before her brain could process it, the quiet sounds shuffled feet beyond the doors and the smell of antisceptic that clung to her sheets like perfume invaded her before she even knew what they were.

Hayami stared at the unfamiliar ceiling for a good five minutes, slowly clearing her head. As the grogginess lifted from her head, pain began to radiate in her chest, it was burning deep in a place she couldn't reach. She touched her chest and memories blossomed again, she had been shot.

The first moments of the initial hit, she remembered, was full of confusion- something had happened but she wasn't sure what it was. She wondered if she was actually shot because it didn't feel like she thought it would, it felt like someone slammed into her, it hadn't been until she tried to stand up again did she realize she was all wrong. The pain came in waves, crashing into her and withdrawing in pangs of shock, and she counted her life in seconds before passing out.

She wasn't sure how long its been, she was alive and somewhere safe but the pain lingered and soreness creaked into her body, it was sharp but survivable. Maybe that was just the drugs. Her body was uncooperative and clumsy, but at least she was moving.

She was adorned in a hospital gown, unflattering blue loosely tied over her body, an IV in a vein in her hand, hopefully full of pain medication.

She turned her head and smiled.

"Chiba," she breathed. They let him stay with her, and the world was suddenly better. He was still, his chest rising and falling slowly in a sleepy rhythm, his tall, lean body slumped, dark hair tumbled over his eyes and his clothes impossible wrinkled- he had probably slept in it.

"Chiba," she repeated a little louder, her voice was hoarse from soreness.

He stirred at the sound of his name. He raised his head from where it rested on his shoulder to look at her, and when he saw her awake and smiling he went completely still, not even a muscle twitch.

Chiba was a boy hard to read, made even more difficult with his bangs that forever hid his eyes. His expression defaulted in neutrality, but years have made Hayami an expert. The slight tilt of his head, the almost inaudible change of his pitch, the way his hands settled on his knees, she could see through him as if he were made of glass.

It only made sense, they spent the worst moments of their lives together, clinging to each other desperately like driftwood on a churning oceans. They held each other up through the despair and the doubt and the stress of Project E, until finally they had forgotten what it was like to ever be apart.

Hayami raised her arms to him, asking for an embrace. Chiba didn't hesitate, his steps were almost watery in substance, ever moving but trembling, he walked the way men wept. He slid his arms awkwardly around her, the position was odd and uncomfortable, but when Hayami struggled to leave the bed so he could more comfortably surround her with his hug, the pain shot into her like a red hot iron bar pressing down on her chest. He stopped at her flinch.

Instead she slid to the other edge of the hospital bed, wordlessly asking for him to lay next to her.

He hesitated. "Won't it hurt?" He sounded so exhausted she wondered if he really got any sleep at all.

Hayami would not lie to Chiba, she didn't know how to. "My wound is on the other side," she said instead as a concession. He nodded, slid out of his shoes and slipped next to Hayami with soft care. He lay on his side, though she could not see his eyes she knew he was staring at her, studying her.

He pushed a stray hair behind her ear as he took her in, and she couldn't help but notice her hair was stringy and greasy from being unwashed and her breath was probably terrible.

"I'm gross," she said.

Chiba shook his head and then fully embraced her, clammy skin and all, careful to mind her side. His arms were strong around her back and though the movement sparked throbbing in her body again, the very fact that she could feel Chiba in her arms allowed peace wash over her, life felt real again this way.

He buried his head into the crook of her neck as his hands clutched into her skin. She felt his nose brush against the outline of her body and smiled. This was good, this is why she fought. She could feel his need to solidify her in his arms by the tightness and his tremble.

Her near death had almost broken him, she realized, because had the situation been reversed she would be broken too. She stroked his hair as he nuzzled deeper.

"Don't go," he croaked. She kissed his crown in question.

"Don't go somewhere I can't follow," he finished, devastated.

If Hayami had the power, she would never go anywhere without Chiba, but Hayami had no such power and she did not lie to Chiba, so instead she pried him off of her to get a good look at him. He let go reluctantly, he propped himself above her with his elbows.

Hayami did not say "I love you," she rarely said anything. It had made for awkward first dates and near silent nights of intimacy, but what she could do is smile. She cupped his face and ran her thumbs on his reddening cheeks, pink from emotional fatigue. Then she kissed him faintly on the lips, then the nose, the cheeks, then the neck.

When she reached his ear she turned her lips and whispered, "I am here."

And he too smiled with the relief of it all. This was it, she was finally home, home was Chiba's arms and smiles.

* * *

Karma hated wasted time, and bureaucracy was nothing, if not huge allotted wastes of time.

Debriefings were the king of wastes of time, he decided. He was removed from his team, put in a room, and asked the same godamn questions over and over again. He just wanted to go home, eat food that didn't resemble dogshit, and secretly plot an invasive reconnaissance of his own intelligence organization.

"Where did you go and what members were you in contact with?"

"Did you find any information on Agent Bu?"

"Did you at any time, reveal information that could potentially link back to the PSIA or Japanese involvement?"

"Was there any time you felt sympathetic to the goals of the People's Liberation Force."

Bald-san had been particularly grim, he guessed because Bald-san doesn't particularly change his expression, but the questioning was thorough. And because of just how much of a grueling process it all was, Karma was aware he was walking on a thin rope. He had to give enough that the case officer would be satisfied, and hold back the fact that he suspected there was a spy and that he was going to investigate it on his own.

Karma didn't have a problem with lying, he considered himself a connoisseur of half truths, and he understood the best lies were the ones grounded by underlying truths. What unnerved him, however, was the fact he had to rely on his friends to go sell the same story.

That one year in Class E aside, depending on others was never his strength, it would have been so much simpler if he had to go this alone. This stalwart separation did not help, he had no way to contact the others to confirm what they went through on their end.

It was a helplessness that made the itch return with a vengeance. _Scratch, scratch_.

"Do you believe you've contacted any diseases?" Bald-san asked, interrupting his own interrogation. He hadn't missed Karma's compulsive scratching, red streaks were starting to appear on his neck.

"I've been wearing the same clothes for three days," Karma shrugged. "How about letting me take a godamn shower first."

His request was ignored.

His physical came afterwards, to Karma's amusement. Here he was, sixteen escaping from another country with a broken arm, and they needed to make sure he wasn't stupid enough to scream out "For Japan!" while burning down towns before they made sure he wasn't dying of anything.

Medical checkups were as bad as debriefings, even at this facility his mission was secret, and his checkups involved a lot of nothing and vulnerability, with an expectation of honesty. The last part is why Karma had a babysitter to his exam.

"Injured while training in rockclimbing," his babysitter said to his doctor as he rotated his cuff. It was a lame cover story, but it seemed to work. Simplicity worked beautifully without much support.

Now, how the hell they were going to cover up Hayami's gaping bulletwounds was a mystery beyond him.

"Whoever set your bone did a fine job," the doctor said. "You're lucky, if it's been set poorly then your arm would have begun healing the wrong way. You'd have to rebreak the entire thing."

"Yeah, incredibly lucky. It's great we had a guy like that just rockclimbing at the same time," Karma snarked. His babysitter shot him a warning look. Karma smiled just for him.

Karma walked away from that entire situation knowing one thing; they were _pissed._ Project E's first international clandestine mission was a disaster, Bitch-sensei was still stuck behind enemy lines, the PSIA agent they wanted to find was dead and they still don't know why, they engaged in a very brazen firefight that couldn't be swept under the rug, they may or may not have been compromised, and one of their sixteen year old operatives was recovering from a gunshot wound in a country that banned guns.

Karma figured that if he did tell someone that parts of Project E were now secretly working on an internal investigation, they might just shit themselves into a stupor.

Karma grinned. _Now wouldn't that be a fucking tragedy_.

Twenty four observation, they insisted, because after trauma they had to assess whether or not they were ready for release to the public. Karma showered and wore the clothes provided, and tried not to scratch his skin off.

He needed to get out of here and find Kayano.

"Yo, Karma-kun," said the voice of an asshole.

"Hiroshi." Karma glanced around. "Hm, odd."

"Oh?"

"I'm reflecting but I can't think of any reason why I'd be punished by having you inflicted on me."

Hiroshi smiled and patted Karma on the back. "It's good to know that whatever happened to you, you're still as just a shit as you've ever been." Hiroshi pulled out a hard pack of cigarettes, tapping the bottom and taking it with his crooked teeth. "And it's Watanabe-san."

"So what are you here to do? Kill more puppies? Spread pestilence."

Hiroshi checked his watch with half interest. "Going for a walk. How about you join me?"

"As much as I enjoy your company, I'm under lockdown for the next few hours," Karma said. He rolled his aching shoulders and tried to wander off. He really didn't have the endurance for Hiroshi. Trying to pin down Hiroshi was like trying to grab at water, an exercise in futility.

Hiroshi bah'd, waving a hand in dismissal. "I signed you out, as it turns out as long as you aren't showing any signs of mental instability on the trip, I can bring you along." A warm handed plodded on Karma's shoulder and Karma resisted the urge to stab it away. "The joke's on them, you've always been mentally unstable. You just haven't been a threat."

"Yet," Karma's smile was supposed that being with Hiroshi was better than wasting inside with the recycled air, but not by much if he kept listening to Hiroshi laugh open mouthed.

-x-

"Where the hell are we?" Karma asked quirking an eyebrow, the building was crowded, there were middle aged men everywhere with hungry looks in their eyes, drinks clinked, sloshing cheap beer, and the air was thick with cigarette smoke.

"A casino," Hiroshi replied lightly, then mouthing to a bodyguard that Karma was his son in explanation. _The day that we could pass as related is a sad one indeed._

"Gambling is illegal in japan."

"Oh well, if that's the case, then it obviously mustn't be one," he said taking the hat off his head and pressing it to his chest solemnly. "We take the law here very seriously."

"You talk entirely too much for someone who has little to say."

"I'd like to think I'm a fountain of knowledge if you'd attempt to listen," Hiroshi took out another cigarette. It was a wonder if his lunges were not just a set of black smog. "Small casinos exist all over Japan, but they're run by the Yakuza. Lucrative business, letting people bet their lives away. The desperate always find more to lose." He took a long drag, the butt flaring red.

"So what, you're telling me you're Yakuza now?"

Hiroshi smiled, taking the cigarette between the two of his fingers and then waving it in the air glibly. "Do I look like a man who tries that hard?"

"Look at where you work."

"I'm a teacher, I like teaching. Working for people like them is a little too much ambition for a man like me."

"If you're a teacher, then my generation really is damned," Karma said flatly, Hiroshi gently guided him near a table. "If you aren't one of them, then isn't your civil duty to report this?"

"Yes," he said. "But it also seems I'm a fan of Mahjong." He nodded appreciatively towards the table, a smile like warm nostalgia only offset by stained teeth. They all ignored him, focusing on the small tiles as they clinked together in near worship.

"So are you gambling?"

"Not today." He looked like he was in his element, so natural no one even bothered to question Karma. "Today we do my second favorite activity."

"Wasting my time?"

"People watching. Good guess though." Hiroshi settled back, observing the cramped room like it was his kingdom. "Gamblers are funny people, it's the universal sport, all classes and countries do it, despite knowing the consequences. It's especially true in our country where it's still illegal."

"So what are you watching for?"

"The whole gambit," Hiroshi threw out his arms in overplayed enthusiasm. "The losers, the lucky, the ones that treat it like a fun afternoon activity while sitting next the man who breaks his family apart. But my favorite of all-" He leaned in- "Is watching the cheaters."

"If finding the cheaters was easy, then they wouldn't be cheating so often," Karma said. Who in their right mind, anyway, cheated the Yakuza?

"If it wasn't a challenge," Hiroshi replied, "then where would the fun be?"

Karma surveyed the room.

"Not so obvious. You can't catch a cheater if you look like you're searching."

Karma rolled his eyes.

The room wasn't at all like the casinos he saw in Western movies, the building was cramped and tight, and there were no bright lights and high pitched bells and whistles. It was a lot of people, all concentrating in front of them, some laughing, some looked on the verge of crying, all of them wanted more.

It was a lot of bodies to sort through. He began to mentally filter them out, he discarded the losers, poor folk with trembling hands and runny noses, sliding their last dime in desperation.

It didn't always pay to keep tabs on the miraculous winners either, good luck came and went, but those that relied on manufacturing it, wanted to do so without drawing attention.

They would lose from time to time, but made enough for a profit.

He figured, idiots that got too ambitious didn't get to make the same mistakes twice.

"See," Hiroshi lightly slapped the table, "That's the look I wanted to see. Whatever you did on your vacation, it's nice to see you've grown up."

"You talk too much shit," Karma said, propping up his head on a lazy lay of his arm. "Nothing happened on my vacation, and people watching is a chore."

"Yes, yes," he sighed as he waved down the bartender, cupping his hands like he was holding a drink and tipping it to his face in request. He looked back at Karma. "If you're that irritated, I can give you a hint?"

Karma cast a long look from his periphery. "The man in the red shirt and the one drinking in the corner by himself. He's looking at the opponents cards and signaling him."

Hiroshi raised a brow. "Oh? That fast, eh?"

"Most people who cheat at cards don't have any useful sleight of hand tricks. It's not about skill, it's about nerve," Karma said flippantly, all the while continuing to scan the crowd. Most people were too focused on their own cards or whatever poison of choice they were gambling with to notice how frequently the two caught each other's eyes. Shifty gazes that would normally just be shaken off as a nervous player with darting eyes if not for the fact the man drinking in the corner was repeating the same motion over and over.

Hiroshi laughed. "I taught you well, if you're the one giving me tips now."

Karma breathed through clenched teeth at the thought of Hiroshi being his teacher. He had a teacher who he cared about once. And that didn't matter in the end either. "When are you're going to sign my release?"

"When you figure out who his other partner is," Hiroshi said, then walked over to the bar and thanked the man for his drink with typical Japanese politeness.

Karma spent the last few days being sold, nearly killed, and finding out ghosts of old friends were walking among him, he wasn't in the mood to be played with or preached to.

"Careful now," Hiroshi warned while swirling a drink in his hand lovingly, "How am I supposed to sign you out when you look at me like that. A lesser man would see that as a threat."

"Just let me go, Hiroshi."

Hiroshi made a thoughtful hum in the back of his throat. "No."

Karma's glare intensified.

"There aren't many times I get you when your guard is stretched thin. I want to watch," he said.

"Watch me hurt you?"

"Watch what you do when you're under real pressure," Hiroshi said. "What? I told you what I like doing is people watching. You're my favorite target."

"There are safer ways to getting your rocks off."

"Why Karma, all this avoidance. If you needed a hint, you could just ask."

Karma took the glass from Hiroshi's glass, with intent that caused even him to let it go, and then spilled it on the floor without breaking eye contact. They said nothing. Then Karma said, "You shouldn't drink on the job. If you don't sign me out, I could report you." He let the tension roll out of the air with an easy smile, even if it was just superficially.

Hiroshi looked pleased that Karma got the better of him, which was disgusting in all honesty. He watched as Hiroshi dabbed at the spilled alcohol with napkin. "You've cornered me," he sounded satisfied. "I almost feel proud."

Hiroshi wiped the spilled liquor with a grubby napkin. "If you were better at reading people, Karma-kun, you would know that I really do enjoy teaching you brats. I don't take jobs that I dislike, an I like watching you grow brilliantly." He looked up in contemplation, head bobbing thoughtfully, "sans the whole before mentioned inability to read people."

"Maybe it keeps me sane," Karma said, letting his chair slide back with an awkward scrape against ceramic floors. "Life's hard enough without getting into other people's head."

"Life is lovely, if you gave it a try." he said. Then he sighed, "It would nice if you just did what I said and find the other guy, but beating me at my own game works just as well."

"If me beating you makes you happy, then you're life is about to get a whole lot cheerier," Karma replied, gathering his coat, leading the way outside. Hiroshi followed.

"And Hiroshi," he glanced back with a bored look on his face. "The last guy? The sneezing woman at the bar."

Hiroshi barked out a laugh.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I had this and another chapter awaiting editing. Editing is the worst. It makes me want to cry. This chapter wasn't suppose to exist, it's largely a "filler" chapter, but I find recuperating chapters after arcs are the best time to explore characters and relationships and I needed a tie in before the next arc begins. This pretty much ends the first story arc out of three.

 **Autistic-Grizzly:** Karma's one of those characters, when he starts to plan, the audience goes "oh crap, here it comes." That tension translates nicely even to fanfiction. But yes, Karma is sort of the sleeping giant, and he just woke up.

 **TheRoseShadow21:** Here it is, the Hayami/Chiba monologue I've been hoping to pump out because they are the otp. Unfortunately it's short because plot demands to continue, but there's emotional significance there. I think if Hayami died, Chiba would have as well, one way or another, and their defeat wouldn't just be a technical one, it would be a total devastation.

As far as Sugino, I think Karma has a tendency to look down on most people, but Sugino especially because out of all of them- he didn't quite fit in with the weirdness and brokeness of it all. It made his suffering more visible but also the people around him who adapted to everything more uncomfortable too, because somewhere they understand that Sugino is the normal one.

As far as Isogai, yes, he does pop up in this story arc (although Hayami and Chiba do cycle out). It'd be a shame not for him to do something since he's such a likeable character.

 **KyrieEleisonElise:** Nagisa, and the Nagisa-Kayano dynamic, will pretty much be pretty big in the story arcs, so I hope you enjoy them. I missed the blue haired assassin.

 **FlameBrainx791:** Thank you so much for your review and critique! Characterization is my favorite part of writing fanfic, even when the characters are different, I hope to explain and show why they are different in a believable way. I think death has a weird way of hitting characters, Karma needing for it to make sense was the most interesting because it was something that not only you didn't expect but also he had to justify in his own head. Karma's one of those guys who, at least to himself, actions must make sense, even if it is being motivated by something emotional.

Kayano's one of those people who is driven completely by emotion, and thus people dying to her just sets of a switch. At that time, Kayano didn't just lose a person she liked, she lost the people she loved most in a short period of time, and so she went the extra mile in having to cope.

You're right, I misspelled Koro, I don't know how that slipped my attention. Thank you again.

-And thanks to all who favorited/followed!


	12. Chapter 11: A Time for Remembrance

_Project End_

Chapter 11: A Time for Remembrance

* * *

She didn't feel safe until she entered her apartment. Nagisa had been silent as the dead the entire journey back, he asked no questions from the sea, all the way to Tokyo. That was okay because she wasn't sure what she would say.

She was too exhausted to even attempt her usual ritual of securing her home, searching and waiting for any sign of infiltration. If she could, she would crumble and sleep right there on the floor of the hallway. But she couldn't just stop her with her plus one still standing at her heels, instead she shepherded the timid Nagisa to her room.

"Here," she said, her eyes threatening to close midsentence. She pointed to the mattress on the floor and he didn't even complain. She wondered what "Jiang" slept on, if he was use to sleeping on flimsy mattresses on the ground and he thought this was normal. He took it as silently as he did the invitation into her house, with his head down and his movements robotic.

She closed the door behind him, she didn't consider that it was the wrong thing to do until the second it was shut, because she didn't want him to think this was a prison.

She was thinking too much. She wiped a tired hand over her face. And now she didn't have a bed. But she was so tired, and so relieved to finally feel safe that she quickly fell asleep next to the door, leaning her head against the wall. Tomorrow would bring the same anxieties and more dangers, but tonight- tonight sleep was king.

That night, her dreams were completely soundless, friends and family pantomimed like a street performance. She kept telling at everyone that she couldn't hear, that she couldn't understand, she was screaming at them until her throat ached. Korosensei stood in front of her smiling, enthusiastically waving his hands.

"I don't know what you're saying!"

Then the world in her dream just went on without her, and she was left confused and frustrated.

When she woke up, only feeling marginally better after a stilted rest, she sat completely still to take in all the sounds. The commotion of Tokyo streets, the freezing wind rattling against the window pane, and the even rhythm of her own breathing. She could hear it all, comprehend it all, but she still felt a little lost.

She blinked.

Oh man, she was foul, her hair was awash in grease and been tossed by sea wind, when she licked her lips she could still taste the salt from the ocean on her tongue.

In the background, she heard rustling from her room. Her body seized until she remembered _Nagisa_. She felt a little lost again.

She pushed away the effects of a terrible night's sleep and groggily stood up. She rolled her shoulders and mentally prepared herself for the worst, that maybe it was all a dream, or that Nagisa died while she was asleep, or they were all taken by Project End and this was the last of her freedom.

She opened the door and nearly jumped out of her skin when she immediately came face to face with Nagisa. Holy hell, was the boy quiet, not many people could get the jump on her. It was unnerving to see a dead boy stare back at her. Back at the island he always avoided her eyes with his gaze perpetually lowered to her feet, but now he was studying her.

"You know me," he said.

Her chest filled at his words. She grabbed at his hands but he flinched, so she dropped them. "You remember." Her smile was cautious but hopeful.

"No, you're wall..."

He pointed to the scattered clippings of news and leads pinned to her wall. Her heart dropped and the feeling of exhaustion overwhelmed again, it had completely slipped her mind when she gave him her room. There spelled out her entire life, her goals and her questions, the things that made who Kayano, Kayano.

It felt oddly vulnerable, almost embarrassing, like being caught naked in front of a crowd.

"I'm sorry," he trembled out, seeing the way Kayano reacted. She slipped back into actress mode, letting the emotions pass from her face.

"No, you didn't do anything wrong," she quickly said, lifting a hand to tell him to stop. "It's um. It's complicated. You must have seen the pictures." In every picture of Class E, she had blacked out Nagisa's face with a marker, but he could still see the telltale blue hair and the androgynous frame. "Yeah, I know you."

"The other people that were on the island, the boy I fought. He knows me too," he said in tentative curiosity.

Kayano's smile was halfhearted. "Yeah. He knew you too." She wandered towards her class photos, and suddenly felt regret that she had ruined them. All the happy memories now looked ominous with the black scribbles over a now faceless boy. She considered the picture with a gentle touch of her fingers as they traced in nostalgia. "How much," she swallowed hard. "How much do you remember?" She refused to look away from the photos.

It was silent for a very long time, and Kayano wondered if she asked the wrong thing.

"I have… a lot of blank spots. I don't know a lot." His voice filtered in like a whisper. "I don't know you. I don't know these people in the pictures. Everything just starts a little while ago."

His voice started cracking just a bit, it was scared and breathey, as if she was pushing too far and she was watching him unravel. "Okay. Okay, if that's where it starts, that's where it starts." But there was one more she had to ask, even if it risked hurting him. _Ask him_ , hissed Akari in her head.

"Do you know this man?" she asked, pointing to a photo of Yanagisawa, smiling like a serpent right at her.

Nagisa paled, whiter than bone. His pupils dilated and sweat collected on his brow.

His expression said it all.

"Did he hurt you?" she asked.

He shook, so fragile you wouldn't suspect he could kill her at this moment if he wanted to. That was a yes, too, she supposed, and hate and vile burned into her chest. She put her hand over Yanagisawa's picture, covering it from view.

"That's good enough. We don't have to talk about it anymore. Let's go." She wanted to put her hand on his shoulder to stop the trembling, but she got the distinct impression that physical contact was still taboo.

The silence was awkward and ungainly, she took them out of the bedroom into the living room, but there wasn't much to offer him there either. He took to a corner of the room, shrank himself into the corner as small as he could be, and let the tremors run its course, waiting for her commands or something for her to say.

She had nothing to say, and besides twiddling her fingers, there wasn't much to do. She didn't have a couch, just one lone chair and one small end table where her laptop rested, but she felt if she sat down there, it would be like denying Nagisa a seat. So she stood, staring clumsily at the spot next to his face.

Oh, maybe she should tell him something to get his mind off of Yanagisawa.

"Your real name is Nagisa. Did you know that?" she asked him, lingering on the wall opposite of him. The deliberate separation reminded her of their first conversation on that godforsaken island, and the comparison of her near empty apartment to that abandoned building was painfully accurate to the point of embarrassment.

"No," he replied, finally looking at her, his movements were hesitant.

"We were in the same class in our final year in middle school. You'll be turning seventeen this July," she continued, grateful for something to fill the silence. "Um, your favorite subject in school was English. Your best friend was named Sugino, you already met him at that place…" bad subject. She slapped her hand to her head. "You're really observant, back in class you use to take a lot of notes, not just for school but for Ku... well. You lived with your mother." Oh crap, she didn't even think about that, Nagisa was confirmed dead. He couldn't just waltz back into his family's life, not with Project E and Yanagisawa still around. But separating them for longer? That didn't feel right either.

What would Korosensei do? _Korosensei._

"You wanted to become a teacher you know," she said wistfully. She remembered when he told her that, the amount of thought and implications this one revelation held was something she couldn't do justice in one sentence.

Nagisa was sitting down in a guarded position, his arms wrapped around his knees and his head lowered so she couldn't see his mouth. "You… knew me pretty well," he said behind his arms.

She crossed her own arms. It was weird when he said it like that. "Yeah, I guess I did." She paused to look at the floor before amending, "N-not like a stalker or anything." That just made it sound more suspicious; she exhaled loudly. "We were friends. I mean besides the whole, pretending to be- haa- nevermind. You must me hungry." This was too weird, she felt all stiff and gawky.

Food would make things better, her stomach rumbled in agreement. She hadn't eaten for more than twenty four hours, but nervousness had killed her appetite. She went to her pantry door and opened up the cupboard. The void stared back.

"I have… crackers." She shook her head miserably. "And water. From the sink, I mean. Where are my cups?" She began to dig around what could only be optimistically called a kitchen.

Her apartment was never equipped for any realistic live-in, not unless they were paranoid-obsessive assassins who lived off the grid. She needed to get more food. She looked back into the living room. And a couch. Maybe a book or two. And a proper bed, she couldn't just let Nagisa sleep on the floor.

"Here," she thrusted the crackers at him, and they crumbled a bit in his hand.

"Thank you for your kindness," he said politely, like he was addressing her superior.

"It's not like that," she blurted. Was he really thanking her for crackers and tap water? When she snacked on her own handful of crackers, he looked at her with mild surprise.

"What?"

"Are you eating… this too?" He looked abashed at the idea of eating the same meager scraps as she was. Was he not use to eating the same thing as others? She imagined Nagisa chained to a corner, forced to eat table scraps as men ate five course meals at their table.

"I'm not going to feed you anything worse than I would normally eat. You know that right?" She bit in her cracker, wiping off the crumbs. She knelt to eye level and this time she held Nagisa's stare, if nothing else, she wanted him to know this. "I'm not your master, Nagisa, nobody owns you anymore. This isn't a prison. There's no one who can force you, and no one to hurt you. I know I'm a stranger in your eyes, and there's not much you can trust, but at least I hope you realize that we're equals."

His face was a calculated calm. Then; "We were… good friends."

"Yes."

"Were you on the island to look for me?"

"No," she replied honestly. "That man I showed you." He flinched. "I went to make sure that he doesn't get to hurt people again." _That_ was only half honest.

"Why?"

"Because he hurt too many people I care about."

Finally, very timidly, slowly, almost painfully, a softness blossomed in his eyes, and it was the sweetest thing she had ever seen in years.

"What happened to us?" he asked. _To make us so broken_ , he didn't have to add.

"Something, something very bad," she said with a flinching smile. "Everyone thought you were dead."

"Oh," he said, not particularly affected. He glanced around the building.

"You only have one bedroom," he said out of nowhere.

"Yeah."

"…So you slept on the floor?"

"I'm thinking about a bed really soon. It's not much, but this place is safe."

"On your wall," he said. "There's a lot of names written on it."

"They're mine. All of them. It's hard to explain."

"So is your name Koroko-sama?"

"No sama," she replied. "It's not like that here. But I am not called Koroko, if that's what you're asking."

"Then what should I call you?"

She paused. "Kayano Kaede is fine."

"Kayano-sama."

"…"

"I mean Kayano-san. Is that your real name?"

"No. But it's the one that matters the most to me right now." She wished he would just remember, this entire exchange made her sound like a lunatic. Switching topics. "I need a shower." She walked briskly out of the room. Was talking with Nagisa always this hard?

 _Maybe- at least when she was talking about the things that really mattered_ , she ruminated in her purposefully cold shower. With him here, all the repressed memories had free reign; _walking down the streets of a festival, rolling around in hospital beds after her fight with Korosensei, blushing while making him chocolate for Valentines day, but never being able to spit it out_. Her cheeks heated up just remembering her failed confession attempt, and she notched the shower colder.

She would need another towel for Nagisa, she thought idly as she dried herself off.

When she came back, she saw Nagisa bugged eyed in absolute shock, more emotion in this one expression than the entire spectrum of the past couple of days.

"Kayano-san!" he said in awed bewilderment, voice raising in an octave.

Kayano readied a defensive position.

"Your computer is talking to me!"

"What?"

"I do more than talk, Nagisa-kun." Ritsu replied, the computer screen glowing. Nagisa backed away.

She had completely forgotten about her, and that she hadn't told Ritsu the details yet.

"She's one of your friends, Nagisa," Kayano replied.

"She is?" He looked at the screen. "Is she… using a program?"

"No, Nagisa. I _am_ a program, not a human. It seems your memory banks are corrupted, so let me reintroduce myself. My full name is Autonomously Thinking Fixed Artillery. You may call me Ritsu."

Nagisa glanced at Kayano. "Artillery?"

Kayano sighed. "We had a weird class."

This one was going to take awhile.

* * *

Takebayashi remembered he used to be friendlier. Maybe friendlier was the wrong word, a lot less bitter and frustrated at the whole of humanity would be more accurate.

"Chiba, you moron, get off of her or you'll reopen her wounds," he bit out, grabbing the boy by the collar of his shirt and yanking him off his girlfriend.

Chiba looked at him, he suspected, it was hard to tell under the fringe. Every freaking time Takebayashi came into the room, they were all over each other despite multiple warnings. Most times they were just sleeping next to each other, but a few times their hands had disappeared under clothing, working heavily in ways they really shouldn't in a hospital.

"Doing that crap when she's still this injured is going to kill her, and then I'm going to make sure it's recorded as 'death by being disgusting'."

He sat down next to Hayami. He wasn't her doctor, he wasn't a doctor at all if he was being precise, but Project E had full intentions of training him to the point of nauseam. It was certainly a better deal than some of his friends got, he thought of Yada and Kurahashi in particular, but he rarely had more than four hours of sleep and he was always being called on to sit on his friend's examinations for a more hands on learning.

And his friends were, in no uncertain terms, the worst. Most of them insane, all of them were probably out to drive him to the brink of it too, with their constant death defying attitude and their secret desire to get in as much pain as possible.

He managed to save Hayami, thank god, and she'll stay alive so long as he can strangle Chiba away. Which was turning out to be a lot harder than keeping a teenage gunshot victim alive.

"You look like shit," he said professionally. "But you're not dead."

Hayami nodded, still a little flushed from the petting. Ugh. If the whole, murdering Korosensei and being forced to work under corrupt agencies hadn't destroyed his faith in society, this would have done the deed surely.

He flipped through Hayami's chart and snorted. They managed to explain her injuries away as a fall and accidental impalement on a broken pipe. Stupid, anyone worth their weight would know it was bullshit. But that was why Project E invested so much in him, because what they really wanted was the hospital. As the hospital's dean's son, he had a lot of access to power that normal children shouldn't have. It was annoying, humiliating even, to be used like this. But it was better than his friends not being treated.

He slid on medical gloves and carefully raised her up a bit.

"How's the pain?" he asked as he redid her dressing. He pulled the cloth and the fluff away, discarding the soiled bandages in the biohazard waste. Hayami hummed in response which he interpreted as, "I'm fine, if a little stupid." If there was one thing about these two, they never complained. Which, as their doctor, was infuriating.

He replaced her dressings and saw her IV drip was looking a little low, but he could let a nurse deal with that. Nothing else required much attention.

"I'll check up on you soon." Then he glared at Chiba, pointing for emphasis. "You. Stop being gross. Let her rest."

He nodded which he assumed meant, _I will not listen to you ever, because no one ever listens to Takebayashi._

His examination finished earlier than expected, he finally had some of that rare down time that often eluded him. The new Miku Hatsune game was released last week, and he hadn't gotten a chance to play.

He decided "screw his workload," he would finally take a bit of time for himself, rounded the corner, and felt himself hate the world even more.

"No," he said.

"Hey Takebayashi," Kayano replied, waving.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and quickly surrendered. "Come on, Project E thinks I'm still checking up with Hayami and Chiba. I got some time, you leech." He hurried to the stairs. One of the private practitioners that worked through their hospital was on vacation, like the lazy bums they were, and their office was vacant. "I figured you would come by sooner or later. What's it this time? Did you get thrown out of a bus? Go on another infiltration mission on a random island."

"If I recall you were on that island too," she replied, jogging down the stairs after him. "But it's not for me."

"Then-"

He glanced back, and he had to reach the stair rail to not trip over his feet. He breathed deeply.

"Nagisa." He gave himself a moment.

It wasn't as if he forgot him, or that he didn't think Kayano would bring him back here. _But you think someone is dead for two years and now he's standing there just like you remembered him._ He and Nagisa weren't particularly close, not as close as some of the other people in Class E. But him dying was such a monumental moment in his life, it changed the way he lived and what he believed. It made him who he was now, for better or for worse.

"C'mon then," he said, leading him into a room, he was as professional as he could be. "Wait there." He closed the door leaving Nagisa alone and turned to Kayano. "Any specific reason you want me to see him?"

Kayano nervously picked at the lint of her sweater. "He doesn't remember us. Or his life as Nagisa."

"I got that with the whole, try to murder us on sight." Takebayashi ruffled his hair in irritation. "Do you know what he does remember?"

"He has a little memory of Japan, I think. So it doesn't start at the island but just barely before," she said biting her lip. "But he doesn't tell me much." Her voice lowered, like she was scared the walls were listening. "He knows Yanagisawa. And he's scared of him."

Takebayashi exhaled, his body felt heavy. "Crap."

"Before everything… happened at the island, my guide said Yanagisawa called him a failure."

There was a lot what that could mean, but none of it good. No point in speculating without evidence. "Got it." He entered the room again.

"Hello Nagisa. I'm Takebayashi. I'm," he sighed. "I'm not a doctor. But I sometimes do doctor- like stuff for people with too many secrets." Nagisa nodded lightly.

Takebayashi couldn't help but observe him as they went through the normal procedures.

He still had the effeminate features, sharp eyes, and long blue hair, but there was an offness of him. Nagisa was always docile, but there was a resoluteness about him that this one didn't have. This Nagisa was subservient, passive in ways Nagisa never was.

"No fever, blood pressure at 120/80." He turned and scowled at Kayano. "Do you mind?"

She was leering over them, staring intently like she was about to strike. She spared him a glance. "What?"

"Get out. It's distracting when you hoover."

"I'm not hoovering," she said indignantly, as she began to circle Nagisa, staring at all the notes Takebayashi was scribbling down.

"Like a helicopter." He pushed her out of the room. "It's annoying."

"But-"

"Nothing is going to happen. Just wait out there. Keep watch, or find a corner to brood in." Before she could say anything else he closed the door in her face and sighed.

Nagisa watched the entire exchange with cautious bemusement. "You… were at the island too."

"Yeah."

Remorse and fear flared up. "I'm sorry for attacking you and your friends."

"I don't care. We won anyway." Takebayashi didn't like what he was seeing, the shaking, the shrinking, the expectation of retribution. Naigsa was definitely abused, and Takebayashi was no psychiatrist. "I'm going to need you to remove your shirt."

Nagisa for a second looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Then his eyes glassed over and he mutely did as he was told. _Mental tactics for coping._ _He's preparing himself in case I do something to him._

Takebayashi quickly clarified, "We're only doing an exam. I need to see if you are visibly injured anywhere."

Nagisa barely responded, still somewhere far away. When the shirt was completely off, Takebayashi didn't need to speculate on abuse, he could see it. His body was litany of scars, they crossed his entire body so that there were barely patches of untouched skin left. Many were deep and nasty- almost none of them had been properly treated from what he could see.

This wasn't a body, it was a canvas of torture.

Takebayashi rubbed his temples, not trusting words. He sharply inhaled through his nose. "Right then."

He pulled his chair closer to where Nagisa was sitting on the examination table. He peered over them, the scars were made by several different weapons. Judging by how they healed, his abuse had been constant. Some of them looked as if they came from in combat, which made sense. Some of the scars looked well into a year old, near fading away, and some couldn't have been made more than a week ago. One of them looked a bit infected, but nothing that wouldn't heal on its own.

The ones that worried him the most were the clean cuts, the one that didn't look like they came from abuse or war. It looked like surgery, all done with a level of skill, one such scar ran the entirety of back, paralleling his spine.

 _Yanagisawa._ It must have been. There was no doubt about it, Nagisa was experimented on.

"Any pain?" he asked as he checked his arms, rotating the cuff. Nagisa shook his head timidly. "Have you gotten sick any time recently? Have you broken any bones? Did they make you take any drugs or medication?"

Nagisa shook his head again, but Takebayashi suspected that Nagisa wouldn't say yes even if he had. There was no trust there. This was the worst kind of patient, never said anything and was too broken to force answers.

"Okay then." He scratched his head, _well shit,_ he was going to have to swipe some tools that were tricky to get. "I can't exactly let you wander the hospital with people always watching. You're going to have to get your blood drawn here. Wait, I'll be back."

He left Nagisa still sitting blankly, like a doll, his eyes were dull and unfocused.

Takebayashi shuddered as he closed the door behind him. Outside of the room, Kayano was crouched next to the door, fidgeting nervously. She jumped to her feet when she saw Takebayashi, and without hiding her eagerness asked, "Well?"

"It's not pretty, but I don't think he's sick or in any medical danger," he replied, crossing his arms. "I haven't finished my exam, but I think I got everything I could with what little I have. I'd really like a psychological exam, but unfortunately, all of us in Class E aren't exactly the picture of mental health ourselves. The only thing really left to do is draw his blood and run some tests."

Kayano frowned. "Why do you need to do that? Can't they… trace it?"

"What... no. Shut up you have no idea what you are talking about," Takebayashi replied. "He spent at least a year in that country, we have to make sure he didn't catch anything like TB. And…" He hesitated, then eyed Kayano with a weary stare, "Check for any sexually transmitted diseases."

Kayano's face transformed into utter disgust and hate at the statement, her entire persona went dark. Takebayashi was afraid of this, that Kayano was too unstable to handle the reality of the situation, and her reaction would be dangerous.

"We killed them all," he reminded sternly. "The people who did this to him got what they deserved."

"Not all of them," she said in a low, shaky voice, "Not the one who deserved it the most."

He really couldn't argue with that. "Regardless, don't do anything stupid. Who am I kidding, of course you'll do something stupid- I mean make sure you take care of your guest first," he pointed a thumb in Nagisa's direction. "He doesn't need your instability right now."

Kayano shut her mouth, Nagisa was her weak point now.

"And Karma wants to see you," he said, walking again, hoping to get her mind off of her suicidal march towards revenge. Thankfully, she fell in line.

"What? How did he know you would see me?"

"Because it's Karma and he knows more than he should," Takebayashi shrugged. "He's got a favor to ask."

"A favor? From me?" She quirked a brow. "That's worrying."

"He might be trying to engage in light subversion of the PSIA."

"You're kidding me."

Takebayashi rolled his eyes. "This surprises you? I honestly think this is just ridiculous enough to fit in with the rest of our ideas."

"I'll see what I can do," Kayano mused, more confused than bothered by this new information. To be honest, the idea of Kayano and Karma colluding with each other brought a sour taste to Takebayashi's mouth. Nothing good comes from two mentally unhinged kids with killing experience going around trading favors. But they will, regardless of how he felt.

And begrudgingly, Takebayashi vowed to be there to fix them all up when they inevitably broke themselves.

* * *

Karma hated waiting. It wasn't in his nature to be passive, and had a remarkably low threshold for patience for an assassin in training. It didn't help that with a broken arm, they stopped his physical training and put him on social training.

He was okay with science, language, and math was especially entertaining, it all worked in a straight, linear logic that he could take apart and master, but socialization training often meant pretending to be nice and manipulating targets covertly. Blackmailing was always fun, but was less fun was the emphasis on schmoozing and catering to specific types of people.

It didn't help that Hiroshi was being a spectacularly annoying jackass. It was a relief when he crawled his way home at midnight, he'd like nothing more than to be left the hell alone.

So when he spotted _them_ lingering in his room, he was conflicted. On one hand, he missed his privacy, on the other hand, things could get moving again.

"I see you make home visits," he snorted, throwing his bag on the floor next to his bed, not bothering to turn on the lights, the moon was especially bright tonight.

"So you ask me for a favor, then act like I'm nuisance. Cute," Kayano replied, sitting on his desk with her legs crossed.

"Just because it's necessary- doesn't mean it's pleasant," he shrugged. "And you're sitting on my homework."

"Right. You're upset about your homework," she said with painful sarcasm, but she hopped off anyway. She looked towards the to the corner of his room where the light from the window couldn't reach. Karma followed her gaze and saw something stirring, faint reflections barely showing a lean figure.

It was unsettling, how after all these years, Nagisa could still erase his presence. Karma always knew he was good, that even though he did his best never to be caught unaware again Nagisa could still get the best of him.

He looked away.

Not his business. Karma did his part and he didn't need some weird ass ghost lingering in his life. Besides, it might look and move like Nagisa, but this person in front of him was so vacant he was barely human. Nagisa died and this was an echo, so fuck it all.

"So what do you need," she asked, already tired of their banter. "Takebayashi made it sound like you were about to commit treason."

"He's being dramatic," Karma said smoothly. "Also it's only kinda treason if we do it wrong. I'm never wrong."

"So if it's not treason, what is it?"

"Our patriotic duty," Karma smirked. When Kayano didn't bite he added, "Someone's committing treason, if not us. I just need some help figuring out who it is, but it's hard to investigate the very same someone that has you under lock and key. Even for a man such as myself."

Kayano digested this information, and then exhaled slowly. "I'm not sure what I can do."

"Not you I need," Karma said and she tensed, shifting a quick glance at the boy still hidden in the dark. "And it's not him either. Let me borrow Ritsu."

She relaxed her posture, scooting off the desk and digging her phone out of her jean pocket. "That's not a decision I can make. Ritsu is her own person."

That was one way to put it.

She finished her text and frowned at the glow of the screen. "She'll probably say yes. But… just a warning. Ritsu isn't as… capable as she use to be."

That was certainly puzzling. He hadn't planned on Ritsu's abilities being stunted, he had assumed she was responsible for a number of things, like greasing the wheels to get Kayano on that island. But if she couldn't hack into the PSIA, it certainly put a damper on his plans.

"I need her to identify members of the PSIA and track their records for suspicious activity. See if there was a sudden influx of income or someone has been making shady calls outside of the country." He leaned back. "You think she can pull that off?"

"Right after she puts the finishing touches of Skynet, sure," Kayano shook her head. "I don't know much about cyber security, but breaking into Japanese intelligence and getting a list of all their employees and their activities is a pretty tall order. Even when she was in top shape."

"I can smuggle her into facilities she can take advantage of, and I'm working a way to shorten the list."

"How nice of you."

"I am the shining example of courtesy," he agreed. "Will she help me?"

Kayano crossed the room with a long stare and a longer stride. Then she tossed her phone to him with a deliberate ease that had to be fake. "Of course she will. Can you install her on your computer?"

"No, not a good idea," Karma said, flipping open her phone. A solemn "yes" was left next to a restricted number and he began to respond with a burner email. "My phone and computer are definitely tapped and I want to avoid even the appearance of impropriety until I am sure what's going on. My school computers though, well they're all just dandy, no security software that Ritsu can't easily override. And lucky for me, I happen to be friends with someone with influence in the school."

"You're bringing Asano into this?" She looked at him like he just cracked an especially bad joke. "Are you an idiot?"

"I'm a certified child genius, but I understand how you can get the two confused," Karma replied. "Asano is a risk, but not a big one if I play my cards right, the worst that happens is he thinks I'm crazy. I mean, it's not like the first time one of us fucked with him, it can't be anymore more elicit than when you-"

She stopped him from finishing with an annoyed shove against his chest, her teeth clenched and her ears turning slightly pink. Karma grinned smugly. "Shut the hell up, jackass. I get it." She quickly glanced at Nagisa's direction again and coughed.

"That it? If so I'm leaving," she said a bit huffily, and clearly still embarrassed about the incident.

"One more thing," he said. "Don't give me that look. You've been scavenging off the favors of all kinds of people in Class E since you ran and left us."

She threw her hands up in concession.

"I also want to look into Project End's dealings," he said. "But seeing I'm a little busy with this, you can work with Isogai."

She gave him a curious look. "What are you planning now?"

He walked to the open window, placing his hands on the sill and looking out into the night sky. The moon was still fractured, pieces of its dead body littered like stars trapped in its open wound. Even with the heaters full blast in the house, his room was as cold as the winter night.

What was he planning?

"About Project End? Nothing yet," he said staring out, gripping the house. "It's hard to propose strategies when you're blind."

"But you are going to make your move?"

"Maybe, not sure. I just want to know what their plans are for us. Besides, they spent a lot of money and time training me. Isn't it just… appropriate that eventually I would be used on them?" He considered the slight, thin streams of moon silver that shaped the outlines of his house. "I've got a thing for irony."

"Only second for you love of your own voice." She jerked her head towards the window, and Nagisa silently understood the command. He slipped from the darkness and out of the window in one fluid motion, neither of the boys sparing a glance at each other.

"You have to acknowledge his existence some time," she said when she thought he was gone.

"I'd love to do our friendship happy fun times, when I'm not actively trying to undermine a dangerous government organization."

"It's been hard on me too," she said a little harder than she probably meant to, but with Nagisa out of earshot, she allowed her composure to slip. She looked truly tired and frustrated. "There's just parts of him… gone. I don't know how to get him back. Sometimes we can't even look each other in the face. You were his rival, his other half. You can fill some of those gaps I can't."

"I wasn't his rival," Karma turned away, already bored. "I don't even know that kid there." He wasn't sure if he should be annoyed or amused that someone would turn _to him_ , for some emotional bullshit handholding. "I kept him alive, I gave him to you, my part is done. I don't give a shit what happens next."

She took his words with a drawn out exhale. "Whatever you say, Karma." And she slipped through the window too.

He didn't close it, he stood there, listening to the wind filter in his room and the house settle in the dark. He breathed in the chill of the air around him, eyes closed. It was quiet for a moment.

He breathed out, his eyes opened. A smile grew on his face.

It was time to conquer.

* * *

AN: So, um, my computer crashinated and everything I wrote is gone. Which admittedly wasn't much, I had slowed down in writing and only wrote about a quarter of the next chapter, and may be for the best because I had moved up my pace for the story thus making me rethink what I wrote. But I had actually written down an entire outline with what goes in which chapter and while I do remember it mostly, I had most of what I wanted to planned neatly, something I rarely do. It's a bit frustrating.

It's just a shame it slows here because this is just another set up chapter, and the chapters where characters actually do shit was suppose to come, and those are always more fun to write. Ah well, that's what happens I suppose.

 **Autistic-Grizzly** : TY for the review, you been keeping up with the story even after my long delays, I'm truly grateful! Chiba and Hatyami make it so easy to write with their chemistry.

 **TLGD:** Yeah, Hayami and Chiba in this story are the kind of people that dig into each other deeper after trauma, some people survive hardships through relationships, and I feel like for as much dysfunction they have, they're dependency also helps them stay sane. I'm really glad you like my Karma, I found myself surprised with how fascinating Karma was to write. Unfortunately, this was another of the "Karma setting up plans" rather than Karma doing things, but when Karma gets to do things, it's not something taken lightly, at least, I always felt this is how he was suppose to be interpret him. Thank you for the thoughtful review,

 **TheRoseShadow21:** I kept promising that otp scene for way too long, I really wanted to write it since the early chapters, they're so great together. It's nice to write them in a relief kind of scene after putting through that much stress. I like kicking the crap of my favorite characters and otps, but it also makes the resolution a lot sweeter too. From an OC point of view, I'm never sure how involved I want OCs in my story, but I think Hiroshi does a good job of bouncing off of Karma that I can't do with other characters. There's always an air of tension between the two, they don't so much have conversations as they do have verbal warfare, and Karma does best when he's on the attack. ty for the review.

 **kuroneko051** : You, besides being a great person for reviewing, seem to have an excellent taste in otps, congratulations. It's nice to see someone who likes all my otps too. I'm glad you like my Karma, and how Manami push pulls on his sense of logic and emotional boundaries, watching him confront vulnerabilities is one of the things I enjoy writing about him. And Kayano and Nagisa's relationship is going to continue to evolve throughout the story.

 **wercrazybesties4lyf** : Wow, thanks for all the reviews, seeing someone react the story as they go along really is something I appreciate, I'm really happy you are enjoying it so much. It's really encouraging, I hope it continues to entertain.


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